Posted: Apr 08, 2017 3:22 pm
Corkey wrote:LucidFlight wrote:Thommo wrote:Corkey wrote:"The map is not the territory." - Alfred Korzybski It's a gateway if you choose to use it.
A printed map of the Earth manifests in the arrangement of multicolored inks on a piece of paper, but the map is not ink and paper. A digital map manifests in the arrangements of contrasting pixels on a computer screen, but the map is not the pixels or the screen. "The map is not the territory," it's not a metaphor. Simply put, the software is not the hardware.
I don't think I agree with this, and I'm fairly sure it's not what the quote means.
A map being distinct from the territory does not mean that a map is not ink and paper (or patterns of pixels depending on the specific map).
We really need John Platko here to explain that the map is information... and something about constructor theory and heuristics would help too, I think.
Here's the dichotomy the way I see it. Write a message or map in the sand (territory). Where's the message or map? It's in the sand but it's not the sand.
It's not in the sand at all. It's instantiated in the reader and the writer, in the speaker and the listener. But again, you seem to be struggling with how opinions and definitions are not identical. That's why conventions are adopted to deal with the transmission of information. They're defined as long as anyone agrees to them, but that's the big if. When nobody agrees with your jackass opinions, you're effectively silenced, however long you stand at a street corner on a soap box shouting into a bullhorn.
Corkey wrote:Here's the dichotomy the way I see it.
Street corner. Soap box. Bullhorn.