[setgree]

Two great illustrations of this concept from literature come to mind:

* Borges's 'On Exactitude in Science' [0] about a map that is as large and as precise as the territory, which renders it useless;

* the wonderful Eschaton scene in Infinite Jest [1], with Pemulis screaming: "It’s snowing on the goddamn map, not the territory, you dick!

This point gets made enough over time that one suspects it's an enduring trait of our cognition to mistake the two. It certainly comes up when people present and talk about epidemiology models.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJpfK7l404I -- I think this Decembrists music video does Eschaton wonderfully.

[umvi]

Yeah but with the advent of computers you can have a map as large and precise as the territory... just keep zooming in until the scale is 1:1

[Thorrez]

I think the best example of the map being the territory is videogames. The map file might literally be the source of truth of what is on the territory.

[goatlover]

Assuming you have perfect real-time knowledge of the territory to model which the computing hardware can support.

[setgree]

And would this be useful as a map?

[suryabeep]

I saw the title to this post and immediately thought of these two things. I clicked on the comments, and you've already named them. What great writers!