The Map is Not the Territory
Every model of reality leaves something out. The danger is forgetting that.
A map is a simplification. It has to be — a map the same size as the territory would be useless. The same is true of every model, theory, framework, and ideology you use to understand the world. They are all compressed versions of something far more complex. They highlight certain features and hide others. They are useful precisely because they simplify. And they are dangerous precisely because you forget they are simplifications.
When you confuse the map with the territory, you start forcing reality to fit your model instead of updating your model to fit reality. An economist who insists people are rational actors ignores the evidence of irrational behaviour because the model says it should not exist. A political ideologue dismisses facts that contradict their framework as exceptions or propaganda. The model becomes more real to them than the thing it was supposed to describe.
This applies to your personal maps too. Your self-image is a map. Your understanding of a relationship is a map. Your political worldview is a map. None of them are the thing itself. Holding this awareness — that you are always working with a simplification, never the full picture — is one of the most important habits in sensemaking. It keeps you open to information that your current map cannot accommodate, which is exactly the information you need most.
References
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb — The Black Swan (2007)
- Karl Popper — The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)