Common dismissal: “Aren’t you just saying that ‘the map is not the territory’?” Attempting to clarify, I find myself baffled. Who ever thought the map WAS the territory? (No one.) What work was denying this supposed to do?
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Replying to @Meaningness
people are bad at communicating. "aren't you just saying the map is not the territory" is often a proxy for a harder statement to make "I was confused about what the territory really was for a while", which there's some resistance to admitting.
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Replying to @danlistensto
Not sure I follow—can you say more? How do these statements connect? In what way would one be confused about what the territory is, and how would one get unconfused?
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Replying to @Meaningness
There's a whole class of argument related to refining, correcting, or disposing of symbolic reasoning tools. It's often incredibly useful to be able to do this. when a person really did have a map/territory confusion they will benefit from this kind of correction... 1/n
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Replying to @danlistensto @Meaningness
...but possibly feel a sense of embarrassment or inadequacy once they notice that they had made it in the first place. it seems frightfully obvious once it's been seen, and that's the benefit of refining a metaphor or analogy (better map). 2/n
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Replying to @danlistensto @Meaningness
nobody will admit to thinking "the map is the territory" because it's obviously foolish. that doesn't mean nobody makes that mistake though. they just won't admit it. 3/n
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Replying to @danlistensto @Meaningness
the work that making the dismissal "aren't you just saying..."is the work of doing some face-saving while updating mental models, which can feel uncomfortable. 4/fin
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Thanks! That makes sense!
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