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The map is not the territory (2015)

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31–40 of 53 posts

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#31
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with a perfect representation of the territory, you can just simulate different strategies and deploy the best one. no need for risk management: your perfect map allows you to eliminate all risk Such a perfect map is impossible because it would need to have infinite accuracy, and its consequences would not be computable. > if you build a map without complete knowledge of the territory (which is the majority of maps…

all maps of a physical territory, yes. that’s a consequence of ħ, at the very least. but once you’ve encoded this best of all possible maps, the uncertainties in the map are quantified (like probabilities). you no longer have “unknown unknowns” so you can just carry through all the PDFs and create a true risk assessment. and it’s these unknown unknowns which were, AFAICT, the heart of this article.

You can’t perfectly calculate the future of any situation ahead of time if you’re part of it, because it becomes chaotic.

This is part of the “computers are going to become AGI and enslave us” scam, they show people proofs AIXI is an optimal planner and don’t mention that it doesn’t include itself in the plans in order to make them computable.

If it was possible you could beat the stock market.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#33
This essay mentions the work of Alfred Korzybski. The book containing his life's work is called Science and Sanity. I've read about half of it, but I found it to be very challenging to read. For anyone interested in what he has to say, I would recommend the following:

S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action

Stuart Chase, The Tyranny of Words

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all maps of a physical territory, yes. that’s a consequence of ħ, at the very least. but once you’ve encoded this best of all possible maps, the uncertainties in the map are quantified (like probabilities). you no longer have “unknown unknowns” so you can just carry through all the PDFs and create a true risk assessment. and it’s these unknown unknowns which were, AFAICT, the heart of this article.

You can’t perfectly calculate the future of any situation ahead of time if you’re part of it, because it becomes chaotic. This is part of the “computers are going to become AGI and enslave us” scam, they show people proofs AIXI is an optimal planner and don’t mention that it doesn’t include itself in the plans in order to make them computable. If it was possible you could beat the stock market.

>If it was possible you could beat the stock market

You say that like it's some natural law that that can't be done. But that's not the case.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#35
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could paraphrase this submission as, "The title is not the article"

What if the article isn't the title?

It's for the best, so long as the title isn't the article. I'm not sure what breaking that symmetry would mean.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#36
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t perfectly calculate the future of any situation ahead of time if you’re part of it, because it becomes chaotic. This is part of the “computers are going to become AGI and enslave us” scam, they show people proofs AIXI is an optimal planner and don’t mention that it doesn’t include itself in the plans in order to make them computable. If it was possible you could beat the stock market.

>If it was possible you could beat the stock market You say that like it's some natural law that that can't be done. But that's not the case.

There's some natural laws in the area. You can't win infinite money forever by one piece of good information, it's going to get priced in or the other traders are going to get wiped out.

Rational expectation/efficient market hypothesis works better than people think: https://someunpleasant.substack.com/p/economists-do-they-kno...

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As does "Capability does not equal intent."

Just FYI "Seeing Like a State" is a book, not a saying :)

Thanks. Sounds interesting.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20186.Seeing_Like_a_Stat...

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#38
post #6

>(Another thing holding the company back was simply its base odds: Can you name a retailer of great significance that has lost its position in the world and come back?) This seems significant. If you look at what's happened to most anchor department store retail at malls in the time since, it isn't pretty. You can look at the individual stores (Sears, Macy's, etc.) and find individual culprits to blame. But there's a…

Wasn't toys r us bankrupt but is now coming back?

Apparently saved by military component work if you trust NCD.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#39

Financial markets have no biological reality to tie them down After years of reading various things trying to use past financial data to predict the next depression, I read a thing where a guy said that people get lazy and self indulgent during good times and then work harder during bad times and that explained the ups and downs. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but I stopped trying to find a model that used…

Rather than Lazy/Work hard it might be more speculate/save. In a bull market you are trying to throw more money in. In a bear you are trying to save. It is self reinforcing too.

Re: The map is not the territory (2015)

#40

I had a teacher, at a seminar I took, that kept saying "We need to know what 'Done' looks like." He also was the first person that told me the old Swiss Army maxim: "If the map and the terrain disagree, believe the terrain." Words to live by, as a delivery-oriented software developer.

If the map and the terrain disagree, then something needs to change. A target needs to be blown up, or the map needs rewriting.
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