Mental Model: Map is not the Territory
Rene Magritte, one of the most famous and lasting of surrealist artists. He never thought of himself as a painter, more a thinker that used images to express himself. In 1929, he presented the world with his masterclass painting: The Treachery of Images.
Unlike most paintings, this one speaks in a language that we can understand— Ceci n’est pas une pipe1. The painting says something, it engages, it talks.
The treachery of images at first appears to be obvious in its message. It shows an image of and underneath the image it reminds the viewer that this is not a pipe. Obviously, that's not a pipe, but a representation of a pipe.
It conveys a meta-message that the painting of an object is not the object itself, that representations are not the real thing. They only resemble the real thing.
This idea was further explored by Alfred Korzybski. In 1931, he gave a presentation at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New Orleans where he used the phrase “the map is not the territory.”
Korzybski used this phrase to mean that people, in general, do not have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but merely possess a subset of that knowledge that is then tinted through the lenses of their own experience. The map-territory relationship isn’t just a metaphorical tool. It is true in its literal sense as well.
Why All Maps Are Wrong?
In 1827, Carl Fredrich Gauss proved that you cannot convert a sphere (or any Gaussian curvature) into a plane surface without stretching it. All maps are wrong because they are a rectangular projection of our Earth, which is spherical. Map-makers use a method called ‘projection’ to translate the globe into something flat.
The most commonly used projection of our globe is the Mercator Projection. Even Google Maps uses it. The good thing about Mercator Projection is that it is a reliable tool for navigation.
Gerardus Mercator, the creator of this map, was able to preserve the direction by varying the distance between the latitude lines. But this created some problems. The Mercator failed with its representation of the size.
Take for instance the size of Africa and Greenland. On the Mercator Projection, they look about the same size, but in reality, Greenland is way smaller than Africa—Fourteen Times Smaller.
Why is it Important?
The mental model of map-is-not-the-territory might seem to be very obvious, but oftentimes we ignore the most obvious facts about the world. When we get envious of the lavish lifestyle of our Instagram influencers, when we get jealous of a colleague’s success, when we assume the newspaper headlines to be a reflection of the real world, we forget that the Map Is Not The Territory.
The Internet has made it easier to get influenced by false realities created by the masses. People present a highly polished version of their life, media out blows most bad news, the accuracy of maps is overstated every day.
The consequences of most problems in our life are not as catastrophic as we imagine them to be. Our conscious psyche, in some ways, is also an inaccurate representation of the real world.
This mental model inspires you to get an actual picture of the territory rather than blindly assuming the validity of the map.
A Small Announcement
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which translates to: this is not a pipe
good one