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by feoren 659 days ago
The classic blunder. Another one of their problems was that they had to use all those bits. If only they had access to a 2!

Software is always simplifying reality by using abstractions. What else could it possibly do? Completely simulate reality?
1 comments
bunderbunder 659 days ago
It's not just software. Law and policy do the same thing. So does science - even ostensibly fundamental concepts such as "temperature" are really just a simplifying stochastic model of a complex physical system. This is what natural language does, too.

As another commenter pointed out, "The map is not the territory."

The full Korzybski quote is perhaps more insightful, if less pithy: "A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

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feoren 659 days ago
Right, "the map is not the territory" is just half of the quote, and the worse half at that. It's like saying "well, you never know" to everything. Okay, thanks for your help.

> The full Korzybski quote is perhaps more insightful, if less pithy: "A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

Right, nobody is expecting a map to actually be the territory. The only question is whether it's useful. We do have a pithier quote for that; one of my favorite quotes of all time:

"All models are wrong, but some models are useful."

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