I’m finding this comment hard to parse for some reason. In particular, I’m not sure I understand the phrase “map that is the territory.” On my understanding those terms (which I thought was the usual one, but may not be), it’s a category error to think of the territory as just another map, even if a particularly special one; the territory is qualitatively distinct from any map, it’s a different kind of thing. So “a map that is the territory” doesn’t parse, because the territory isn’t a map, it’s the territory. Are you using these terms in a different sense, or intentionally/actively disagreeing with this framing [EDIT: (e.g., claiming that it’s “just maps all the way down”)], or something else? Also, usually a discrepancy is between two things A and B, so I’m having trouble understanding what you mean by “discrepancies involved in (for instance) optimizing for min Euclidean distance” without a specification of what the discrepancies are between.
I’m saying that law thinking can seem to forget that the map (model) will never be the territory. The real world has real invariants but these are not simply reproduced in reasonable utility functions.
Ah, okay, I think I understand now. That reminds me of Kant’s noumena-phenomena distinction, where the territory is the noumena, and you’re saying we will never have access to the territory/noumena directly, only various maps (phenomena), and none of those maps can ever perfectly correspond to the territory. And Law thinking sometimes forgets that we can never have access to the territory-as-it-is. Is that about right?
I’m finding this comment hard to parse for some reason. In particular, I’m not sure I understand the phrase “map that is the territory.” On my understanding those terms (which I thought was the usual one, but may not be), it’s a category error to think of the territory as just another map, even if a particularly special one; the territory is qualitatively distinct from any map, it’s a different kind of thing. So “a map that is the territory” doesn’t parse, because the territory isn’t a map, it’s the territory. Are you using these terms in a different sense, or intentionally/actively disagreeing with this framing [EDIT: (e.g., claiming that it’s “just maps all the way down”)], or something else? Also, usually a discrepancy is between two things A and B, so I’m having trouble understanding what you mean by “discrepancies involved in (for instance) optimizing for min Euclidean distance” without a specification of what the discrepancies are between.
I’m saying that law thinking can seem to forget that the map (model) will never be the territory. The real world has real invariants but these are not simply reproduced in reasonable utility functions.
Ah, okay, I think I understand now. That reminds me of Kant’s noumena-phenomena distinction, where the territory is the noumena, and you’re saying we will never have access to the territory/noumena directly, only various maps (phenomena), and none of those maps can ever perfectly correspond to the territory. And Law thinking sometimes forgets that we can never have access to the territory-as-it-is. Is that about right?
The words “universal best way” suggest that there’s something that’s true not just for particular maps but that it’s true in a more general way.