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0xADADA | 2 years ago

dont' mistake a beautiful map for the territory, you'll find yourself lost amongst lines that aren't a real place.

discuss

order

sunday_serif|2 years ago

On Exactitude in Science By Jorge Luis Borges

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

source: https://kwarc.info/teaching/TDM/Borges.pdf

The_Blade|2 years ago

nice, you beat me to this gem (with a side of Lewis Carroll and Baudrillard) because I was finishing work

the lesson is, never try

edit OH and the other part is that it was staged literary forgery by "Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658." Borges overclocked the meta

noonething|2 years ago

I was thinking about this the other day and it seems like the problem of map size is also the problem of the story of our lives. How much detail is really necessary.

barrysteve|2 years ago

But a massive precise map is the perfect seed for a useful simplified map.

Simplifying from a non-complex source is a waste of time.

dclowd9901|2 years ago

It sounds like you take issue with this simulation? It applies heavily academic and simplistic rules around behavior. I like build up of it all to illustrate _simulating things_, but I think almost any traditional economics theory outside behavioral economics ought to be shelved for good.

cgio|2 years ago

I would agree up until recently. I am starting to think, though, that behavioral is only relevant in an economy of choice. With choice I keep it simple to having the option to spend or not wealth (including consuming/selling some of your stock). The less choice in the market, the more the classical models will be reasonable and efficient approximations as they can accommodate one sided choices. Complex dynamics are not what we experience now. There is a market direction, the power to impose it and its application at clear sight.

rsrsrs86|2 years ago

Both have been shelved; the state of the art in economic modeling is far, far more sophisticated. It goes way beyond the limitations of economics’ loan from XIX century physics (static mechanics).

Economic modeling based on game theory with extensions (say, requiring that certain agent choices are computable and are so under a limited computational budget, or non determinism, or learning) you still get sensible results under much weaker hypothesis.