Once there was a man who was very disappointed with his life. He visited the house of a wise man to attain wisdom on how to live a happy life. He knocked at his door, the wise man greeted him with a smile. The man was very tired as he came from a very far-off village. The wise man told him to take some rest. He started preparing the tea for the tired man. The wise man gave him a cup and started pouring the tea into it. He kept on pouring the tea into the cup. Now tea was overflowing from the cup. The man thought that the wise man had gone mad but the wise man kept on pouring the tea into his cup. Now the man broke his silence and told him, What are you doing? Are you insane? Don't you see the cup is already filled with tea?
The wise man replied with a smile, this cup is your brain which has filled with stale ideas. Please empty your cup to see the things as they are rather than as you want them to be which is the cause of the unhappiness in your life.
You perceive the world through your senses and forms a map of it. The map is highly subjective. It varies from person to person. In your entire life what you encounter is your own nervous system. The map is not a territory. It might be possible that some useful information is missing from the map. As you use the map over and over, it gets hardwired in your brain. The map is not the reality. It is just a belief or a perception of reality.
The map appears to us more real than the land. D.H Lawerence
In 1931, the mathematician Alfred Korzybski presented a paper on mathematical semantics in New Orleans, Lousiana popularised the idea of Map is not a territory. A description of a thing is not the thing itself.
In his paper, he wrote
A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory. A map is created with a specific purpose.
Two similar structures have similar logical characteristics. If a map shows some city Y between X and Z then in reality also, Y lies between X and Z.
A map is not a territory. It is just an abstraction.
An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of the map, and so on describing the self-reflexivity of it. If a map gives a detailed description of a city then it is not a map but a book. To understand it you need to consult some other simple book referred to as the map of the map which leads to infinite recursion.
The map is static but the world is dynamic. The advancement of science changes the world. The new structures are formed when the old structure breaks. The problem arises when the old map is applied to the new structure. It paves the way to catastrophe. Reality is too complex. Some heuristics are needed to parse complex information. Maps serve as a guide to navigate unknown territory. The fundamental flaw is when the map is taken as a reality.
As time progresses, you have to play different roles like getting married, raising a kid, taking a new project. Maps are needed to accomplish these tasks. Maps are a bundle of ideas to get you started. Update the maps as you receive feedback during your new venture. You are using those maps to find the truth hidden in plain sight. Fit the reality into the map, not the other way round.
Every map has its own limitations. Cartographers constructed the map with a specific purpose. The map can be applied to different situations if and only if the two situations share the same logical characteristics. Using the map of America in India won't be of much help. Always know the use cases as well as the limitations of the map which helps you to decide when to use it appropriately.
Let's understand the whole idea using a real-world example. Assume you invented the time machine and move backward in time (15th century). There exists a common grazing Greenland in your village. You were the head of a village and implemented the policies necessary for its development. One policy was that all herdsmen were allowed to graze their cattle on Greenland. Herdsmen earn their livelihood from the cattle. An idea came to the mind of one of the herdmen to maximize the profit. What happens if I add extra cattle to my herd?
Cattles were the only source of their income. Adding extra cattle increased the utility by +1. He would take all the profit by himself. The negative consequence was overgrazing on the common land. Since the land was shared by many herdsmen, the negative utility is only in fraction. He kept on adding the cattle into his herd. Science had not yet reached its mature state and most people and cattle died due to diseases and wars. So common grazing land won't be an issue.
Now assume you moved forward in time and reached the 20th century. Social stability was attained due to the advancement in science. You used the same map of common Greenland. Now the structure had changed. An extra cattle meant more grazing on the common land. The other herdsmen also started increasing their cattle by seeing his fellow man making a profit by his idea. Now overgrazing increased even more which in turn destroyed Greenland and made it barren. In economics, it is known as the tragedy of the common. Using the same map in two different situations that don't share a common logical structure paves the way for destruction.
What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others. Aristotle
Some decisions are first-order positive and second-order negative. Keep an eye over the whole picture. Think long term over the short term. Be humble, keep your mind open for new ideas. As Charlie Munger said human mind is like a human egg, it has a shutoff device. When sperm enters into it, it closes its door so that the next one doesn't get in.
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