Map/territory distinction

The philosophical principle that a representation of reality is not reality itself, popularised by Alfred Korzybski's aphorism "the map is not the territory." Our models, language, and mental frameworks are necessarily incomplete simplifications of the world they describe — useful precisely because they omit detail, but dangerous when mistaken for the thing itself. The distinction underlies a wide range of later thought, from Bayesian epistemology to Baudrillard's simulacra.

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