arête 03: The Map Is Not The Territory

In this episode, Jason & Steve discuss how maps & models need to be thoroughly examined & loosely held lest they lead us to all kinds of trouble.
We unpack the concept, "the map is not the territory", for its practical utility.

SHOWNOTES
HERE is an article to get you thinking about the concept.
The term The Map is not the Territory comes from Polish-American social philosopher Alfred Korzbzyski. Two other quotes from other thinkers might be useful here for reference.

“All models are wrong but some are useful” - British statistician George Box

“The map appears to us more real than the land.” -British writer & poet D.H. Lawrence

A fuller fleshing out of the concept in Korzbyski words:

A.) A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory.
B.) Two similar structures have similar ‘logical’ characteristics. Thus, if in a correct map, Dresden is given as between Paris and Warsaw, a similar relation is found in the actual territory.
C.) A map is not the actual territory.
D.) An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of the map, etc., endlessly…We may call this characteristic self-reflexiveness.

Maps exist to help us conceptualize the territory they represent. But it is important to keep in mind that they are merely a representation, a symbol of an actual place on the earth. Analogously, all conceptual systems are a map & not the territory. This is a significant problem for most human beings. We are so representationally aligned by our maps that we can frequently get locked into a prison of our own thinking, where whatever is real gets clouded by the concept. Eventually we can only see our models & both the pattern - which may not even have actually been anything other than a trick of our desire to predict - & the reality first observed are utterly forgotten.

Patterns seem to exist in nature. Humans like to predict so we can survive & thrive. Then we take these patterns & build models. The models help us determine our next, best steps to consider so we may act in the world. As we act, we nearly always begin to confuse the model we created for the pattern we observed. We do this over & over & over. Many of humanity's biggest problems come from these classic mistaken metaphors.
Some classic “maps”:

• Symbols (language, art, musical notation, icons, etc.) - We create useful symbols to hold a concept in a useful form.
• Beliefs - We create mental habit patterns to represent what we feel to be true. The belief is not the actual truth, it is an emotionally held thought we use to represent a concept.
• Systems - larger, intertwined patterns of thought that are organized frameworks or methods.
• Time -  a specific system of measurement to represent the perceived experience of a past, present & future. This is discretely divided into seconds, minutes hours, etc. A clock, sundial or hourglass are maps of an inner territory.

We are not arguing that maps are not beneficial, useful or advantageous to human flourishing. It is just crucial to understand how these are easily taken as real, concrete, & physical.
Running Equivalents

• Training plans are not fixed or actual indicators of fitness.
• Course maps & elevations are not the actual course.
• Strava & Geekometers are not the actual physical adaptations, they are data collectors.
• Strategy is a concept for predicting how the race JB will play out, not the steps along the path.

Humans fundamentally operating under the physiological, psychological & cultural imperatives to predict. This need to predict causes us to create models to begin testing reality, catagorize it & build models to allow us better results. So we are spending the vast majority of our time making maps. We want to ensure these maps are not mistaken for the territory of reality, whatever that may be.

Final thoughts on how “essence” or “soul” are also maps.