I noticed here that Eliezer Yudkowsky in his essays (I don’t remember exactly which ones, it would be nice to add names and links in the comments) says that the map has many “levels”, and the territory has only one. However, this terminology itself is misleading, because these are not close to “levels”, these are “scales”. And from this point of view, it is quite obvious that the scale is a purely property of the map, the territory does not just have one scale, the smallest, and it cannot even be said that it has all the scales in one, it simply does not have a scale. Scale is a degree of approximation, like distance is about photographs, different photographs can be taken from different distances, however, the object is not the closest photograph and not all of them put together, it is simply NOT a photograph and there simply is no scale, distance or degree of approximation, it is all the categories that refer to the relationship of the subject and the photograph when shooting, however the subject never shot itself, there were no shooting distances. Talking about levels makes it feel like there could very well be many levels, they just don’t exist, however, when talking about scale, it’s obvious that the territory is not a map, there is no scale, just like there is no cross of your current location or icons for points of interest. And the scale just fits perfectly into the analogy with the map and the territory.
“Map isn’t the territory” comes out of Science and Sanity from Alfred Korzybski. Korzybski speaks about levels of abstraction.
In the photography case, there’s the subject, then there’s light going from the subject to the camera (which depends on the lighting conditions), then the camera sensor translates that light into raw data. That raw data then might be translated into a png file in some color space. These days, the user might then add an AI based filter to change the image. Finally, that file then gets displayed on a given screen to the user.
All those are different levels of abstraction. The fact that you might take your photo from different distances and thus have a different scale is a separate one.
But does Yudkowsky mention the word “abstraction”? Because if not, then it is not clear why the levels. And if you mention it, then as in the case of scale, I don’t really understand why people would even think that different levels of abstraction exist in the territory.
Edited: I’ve searched in Reductionism 101 and Physicalism 201 and didn’t find mention of “abstraction”, so I save my opinion that using just word “level” doesn’t create right picture in the head.
The main issue is that people often make mistakes that come out of treating maps like they have one level.
Yudkowsky, doesn’t go much into the details of levels but I don’t think “scale” gives a better intuition. It doesn’t help with noticing abstraction. Level might not help you fully but scale doesn’t either.
I noticed here that Eliezer Yudkowsky in his essays (I don’t remember exactly which ones, it would be nice to add names and links in the comments) says that the map has many “levels”, and the territory has only one. However, this terminology itself is misleading, because these are not close to “levels”, these are “scales”. And from this point of view, it is quite obvious that the scale is a purely property of the map, the territory does not just have one scale, the smallest, and it cannot even be said that it has all the scales in one, it simply does not have a scale. Scale is a degree of approximation, like distance is about photographs, different photographs can be taken from different distances, however, the object is not the closest photograph and not all of them put together, it is simply NOT a photograph and there simply is no scale, distance or degree of approximation, it is all the categories that refer to the relationship of the subject and the photograph when shooting, however the subject never shot itself, there were no shooting distances. Talking about levels makes it feel like there could very well be many levels, they just don’t exist, however, when talking about scale, it’s obvious that the territory is not a map, there is no scale, just like there is no cross of your current location or icons for points of interest. And the scale just fits perfectly into the analogy with the map and the territory.
“Map isn’t the territory” comes out of Science and Sanity from Alfred Korzybski. Korzybski speaks about levels of abstraction.
In the photography case, there’s the subject, then there’s light going from the subject to the camera (which depends on the lighting conditions), then the camera sensor translates that light into raw data. That raw data then might be translated into a png file in some color space. These days, the user might then add an AI based filter to change the image. Finally, that file then gets displayed on a given screen to the user.
All those are different levels of abstraction. The fact that you might take your photo from different distances and thus have a different scale is a separate one.
But does Yudkowsky mention the word “abstraction”? Because if not, then it is not clear why the levels. And if you mention it, then as in the case of scale, I don’t really understand why people would even think that different levels of abstraction exist in the territory.
Edited: I’ve searched in Reductionism 101 and Physicalism 201 and didn’t find mention of “abstraction”, so I save my opinion that using just word “level” doesn’t create right picture in the head.
for one major way scale is in the territory, search for “more is different”.
The main issue is that people often make mistakes that come out of treating maps like they have one level.
Yudkowsky, doesn’t go much into the details of levels but I don’t think “scale” gives a better intuition. It doesn’t help with noticing abstraction. Level might not help you fully but scale doesn’t either.