I agree your example is a better analogy. What I was trying to point to was something else: how the decision to remove detail from a navigational map feels to me experientially. It feels like a form of voluntary blindness to me.
In the case of the subway map, I’d probably also find a more accurate and faithful map easier to parse than the fully abstracted ones, cause I seem to have a high preference for visual details.
Oh super valid! I live in the Netherlands which is very densely populated