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Max Goodbird's avatar

Really enjoyed this! Thanks for writing it up. I'd love to see some more links out to sources (e.g. was surprised to see an article on map vs territory that doesn't mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski)

A few things stood out:

> There is only one Territory

You could call this true by definition, but it's interesting to consider ways it might be untrue. Could there be several, causally-disconnected territories out there? Could reality be composed of many disparate but overlapping subjective realities, as Schrödinger thought [1]?

> no map can accurately, and completely, represent the gap between that map and the territory

There's a great Borges story about a map that completely covers its territory. Fantasy, obviously, but worth a read! I think you'd like Borges in general.

> However, because the maps in our brains are physical objects, they constantly follow their equation of motion and thus move along energy gradients toward their lowest energy state

Is this true? People are open systems (we literally ingest energy), and most physical laws are stated in ways that assume closed systems. We certainly don't just follow the energy gradient--we're able to kick ourselves out of local minimal pretty easily. Otherwise I'd never get off this couch!

If you wanted to model a person as a (closed) physical system moving through a phase space, you'd probably have to include the Sun.

> Emotions have a valence: positive or negative. Our maps move towards positive feelings, and away from negative feelings. Conflict - inconsistencies in our maps - often feels unpleasant (i.e. has a negative valence).

>

> Our brains attempt to move away from the negative feeling induced by conflict, either by changing the position of physiology (distracting ourselves, looking away, walking away, running away) or else by adding, removing, or modifying existing beliefs.

I assume you're getting at something like Predictive Coding here. I disagree that we avoid conflict--we actually seek it out! We actively look for information that rests on the edge of predictability. We _really_ like surprise that can be integrated into our maps, the bigger the surprise the better (e.g. misdirection in humor, horror movies, doom scrolling...pretty much all media).

See also: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/jhanas-and-the-dark-room-problem

[1] https://superbowl.substack.com/p/church-of-reality-schrodinger-believed#%C2%A7intersubjective-reality

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Dave's avatar

As above, so below. As within, so without. All is mind.

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