The following is an edited excerpt from The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Tools
The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because maps are reductions of what they represent. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us. A map can also be a snapshot from a point in time, representing something that no longer exists. This is important to keep in mind as we think through problems and seek to make better decisions.
We use maps every day to simplify complexity. A great example is the financial statements of a company, which are meant to distill the complexity of thousands of transactions into something manageable. Yet they tell us nothing about whether the product is good for the customer or what’s really going on in the company. 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 to guide you through it.
Relying solely on maps can lead you to the wrong conclusion. You need to touch the territory.
Very early in the history of Amazon, Jeff Bezos was going over a set of documents with his team at the weekly business review. He’d heard that many customers were complaining (the territory) about call wait times, yet looking at the data (the map), he couldn’t figure out why. “When the data and the anecdotes disagree,” he said in an interview, “the anecdotes are usually right.” At the meeting, the head of customer service reported the wait- time metric as under sixty seconds, which was in line with expectations. Bezos paused the meeting, picked up the phone, and dialed the 1-800 number for customer service. He waited on hold for over ten minutes, which made the point that something was wrong with the data collection. Mental models are maps. While they might not be perfectly accurate, they are useful. Mental models and maps are both useful to the extent they are explanatory and predictive.
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 knowledge of the map rather than of the actual underlying territory it describes.
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. When we mistake the map for the territory, 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 that the terrain has changed and we dramatically reduce our ability to adapt to a changing environment.
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.
Take Newtonian physics. For hundreds of years, it served as an extremely useful model for understanding the workings of our world. From gravity to celestial motion, Newtonian physics was a wide-ranging map.
Then, in 1905, Albert Einstein, with his theory of special relativity, changed our understanding of the universe in a huge way. He replaced the understanding handed down by Isaac Newton hundreds of years earlier. He created a new map.
Newtonian physics is still a very useful model. One can use it reliably to predict the movement of objects large and small (with some limitations, as pointed out by Einstein). And, on the flip side, Einstein’s physics is still not totally complete: with every year that goes by, physicists become increasingly frustrated with their inability to tie it into small- scale quantum physics. Another map may yet come. But what physicists do so well, and most of us do so poorly, is carefully delimit what Newtonian and Einsteinian physics can explain. They know, down to many decimal places, where those maps are useful guides to reality and where they aren’t. And when they hit uncharted territory, like quantum mechanics, they explore it carefully, instead of assuming the maps they have can explain it all.
Maps Can’t Show Everything
Some of the biggest map/territory problems are the risks of the territory that are not shown on the map. When we’re following the map without looking around, we trip right over these risks. Any user of a map or model must realize that we do not understand a model, map, or reduction unless we understand and respect its limitations. If we don’t understand what the map does and doesn’t tell us, it can be useless or even dangerous.
In order to use a map or model as accurately as possible, we should take into account three important principles:
- 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. In everything from traveling to a new city to becoming a parent for the first time, we benefit from 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 our maps based on our own experiences in the territory. That’s how good maps are built: through feedback loops created by explorers.
We do have to remember, though, that a map captures a territory at a moment in time. Just because it might have done a good job at depicting what was at the time it was made, there is no guarantee that it depicts what is there now or what will be there in the future. The faster the rate of change in the territory, the harder it will be for a map to keep up-to-date.
Consider the cartographer
Maps are not purely objective creations. They reflect the values, standards, and limitations of their creators. Models are most useful when we consider them in the context in which they were created. What was the cartographer trying to achieve? How does this influence what is depicted in the map?
Maps can influence territories
This problem was part of the central argument put forth by Jane Jacobs in her groundbreak- ing work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs chronicled the efforts of city planners who came up with elaborate models for the design and organization of cities, without paying any attention to how cities actually work. They then tried to fit the cities into the model. She describes how cities were changed to correspond to these models, and the often negative consequences of these efforts. “It became possible also to map out master plans for the statistical city, and people take these more seriously, for we are all accustomed to believe that maps and reality are not neces- sarily related, or that if they are not, we can make them so by alter- ing reality.”
Jacob’s book is, in part, a cautionary tale about what can happen when faith in the model influences the decisions we make in the territory— when we try to fit complexity into the simplification.
Conclusion
The map is not the territory reminds us that our mental models of the world are not the same as the world itself. It cautions against confusing our abstractions and representations with the complex, ever-shifting reality they aim to describe.
It is dangerous to mistake the map for the territory. Consider the person with an outstanding résumé who checks all the boxes on paper but can’t do the job.
Updating our maps is a difficult process of reconciling what we want to be true with what is true.
In many areas of life, we are offered maps by other people. We are reliant on the maps provided by experts, pundits, and teachers. In these cases, the best we can do is to choose our mapmakers wisely and to seek out those who are rigorous, transparent, and open to revision.
Ultimately, the map/territory distinction invites us to engage with the world as it is, not just as we imagine it. And remember, when you don’t make the map, choose your cartographer wisely.
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