From Shane Parrish’s “The Great Mental Models”
The Map is not the Territory
“The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent.”
“We use maps every day. They help us navigate from one city to another. They help us reduce complexity to simplicity. Think of the financial statements for a company, which are meant to distill the complexity of thousands of transactions into something simpler. Or a policy document on office procedure, a manual on parenting a two-year-old, or your performance review. All are models or maps that simplify some complex territory in order to guide you through it. Just because maps and models are flawed is not an excuse to ignore them. Maps are useful to the extent they are explanatory and predictive.”
“The truth is, the only way we can navigate the complexity of reality is through some sort of abstraction. When we read the news, we’re consuming abstractions created by other people. The authors consumed vast amounts of information, reflected upon it, and drew some abstractions and conclusions that they share with us. But something is lost in the process. We can lose the specific and relevant details that were distilled into an abstraction. And, because we often consume these abstractions as gospel, without having done the hard mental work ourselves, it’s tricky to see when the map no longer agrees with the territory. We inadvertently forget that the map is not reality.”
“But my GPS didn’t show that cliff We need maps and models as guides. But frequently, we don’t remember that our maps and models are abstractions and thus we fail to understand their limits. We forget there is a territory that exists separately from the map. This territory contains details the map doesn’t describe. We run into problems when our knowledge becomes of the map, rather than the actual underlying territory it describes.”
“When we mistake the map for reality, we start to think we have all the answers. We create static rules or policies that deal with the map but forget that we exist in a constantly changing world. When we close off or ignore feedback loops, we don’t see the terrain has changed and we dramatically reduce our ability to adapt to a changing environment. Reality is messy and complicated, so our tendency to simplify it is understandable. However, if the aim becomes simplification rather than understanding we start to make bad decisions.”
“We can’t use maps as dogma. Maps and models are not meant to live forever as static references. The world is dynamic. As territories change, our tools to navigate them must be flexible to handle a wide variety of situations or adapt to the changing times. If the value of a map or model is related to its ability to predict or explain, then it needs to represent reality. If reality has changed the map must change.”
“In order to use a map or model as accurately as possible, we should take three important considerations into account: Reality is the ultimate update. Consider the cartographer. Maps can influence territories.
Reality is the ultimate update: When we enter new and unfamiliar territory it’s nice to have a map on hand. Everything from travelling to a new city, to becoming a parent for the first time has maps that we can use to improve our ability to navigate the terrain.
But territories change, sometimes faster than the maps and models that describe them. We can and should update them based on our own experiences in the territory. That’s how good maps are built: feedback loops created by explorers. We can think of stereotypes as maps. Sometimes they are useful—we have to process large amounts of information every day, and simplified chunks such as stereotypes can help us sort through this information with efficiency. The danger is when, like with all maps, we forget the territory is more complex. That people have far more territory than a stereotype can represent.”