User:Silence/Map

We use maps all the time, but we don't generally think of them as maps. While mowing the lawn, I rely on my beliefs and perceptions to avoid slamming into a wall. But I don't reflect on them as beliefs and perceptions. In the moment, my visual experience appears as an immediate acquaintance with my environment. The fact that the data available to me is occurring in my own head is bracketed; the complex chain of causes linking blades of grass to photons to my eyes to my brain is simply not in the picture.

Still, sometimes it is useful to take a step back and consider our beliefs and perceptions as maps, as representations of some independent reality. Thinking in terms of a map-territory distinction is clearly useful when we want to theorize about the general features of our representations, including ideas like truth, meaning, and reference. But it's also useful in some less obvious ways, for combating a variety of practical and theoretical pitfalls, such as...

• 1. anti-realism.
  • Anti-meme: Realism
• 2. magical wishful thinking. The intuition that hope or faith will make things better in the real world.
  • Anti-meme: Disbelief in belief
• 3. denialism. The fear of recognizing that one is wrong, even if one actually is wrong.
  • Anti-meme: Litany of Gendlin
• 4. . Difficulty seriously considering that one might be wrong, or seriously entertaining particular ways one might be wrong. Makes it harder to overcome hindsight bias and to reason counterfactually or hypothetically.
  • Anti-memes: Consider alternative hypotheses; be a thought experimenter
• 5. fallacies of compression
  • Anti-meme: Map
• 6. typical mind fallacy. The assumption that others (in this case, others' beliefs) are extremely similar to one's own.
  • Anti-meme: