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by earthboundkid 2196 days ago
What’s interesting are cases where the map is the territory. The Facebook map of your friends just is the graph of your Facebook friends. The chain of command for the military just is the chain of command. Etc.
3 comments

Ehhh, the chain of command in the military is defined by regulations (the map) because you never know exactly who is going to be incapacitated at any given moment. Therefore while today a peer platoon leader might have no authority over me, if our company commander is killed tomorrow and my peer has seniority, he may suddenly have command authority over the company.

So while I get your point, I wonder how much people miss the map due to obscure knowledge requirements and think it doesn't exist.

Trivially so, but are they even interesting?

Such well-specific label territories are often artificial. Your Facebook social graph is a poor proxy for your actual IRL social network (or whose opinions you interact with the most, etc)

Big bureaucratic organizations (or other less responsive intelligences) often try to force the territory to conform to the map, for convenience of steering, but it seems like there is a significant map/territory mismatch in the generally interesting/important cases.

They’re always artificial. That’s how you make the map and territory the same.
The map says an O-1 outranks an E-7; the territory says a wise O-1 takes cues from their E-7.
Or:

MAXIM 2: A sergeant in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on.

MAXIM 3: An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.

Yes, the chain of command is an abstraction. Actual authority is something else.