[coxmi]

This is a great hacker news meme, but a map is still obviously useful.

To analyse the map, its author and its purpose, is just as useful as getting into the weeds and understanding the terrain.

What use would knowing the terrain be if you can’t share your mental model of it with someone else?

[taeric]

This runs the danger of mistaking a map for a mental model. Which, for some of us, I bet that is the case. For others? I don't know.

Note that this is emphatically not saying to abandon maps. I'm pushing more for having things in addition. And if you really want to build a shared mental model, you almost certainly have to share an experience. You can use narratives to help build a shared experience, but often you have to practice/rehearse anything that you want to have a truly shared model of.

[kybernetikos]

I'd go further. If you think you understand the terrain in itself, all you've really done is make a more detailed map. You can ask the terrain questions, but you can never understand it or predict it or do anything useful with it except by making a map.

"The map is not the terrain" is useful if you're in danger of throwing away evidence that challenges your favourite model, in all other cases it distracts attention from the fact that building models is essential and important.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, but then it's like «All models are wrong, some are useful.» that already presupposes that you are aware of that models are unavoidable ?