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BroadShoulderedBeast t1_jbmpta7 wrote

Reply to comment by AllanfromWales1 in Wrote a short essay on Blogger with arguments about the realness and consistency of the perception of reality. Feel free to share your thoughts about the subject. by WrongdoerOk6812

The map analogy really doesn’t hold up when you bring up “prediction of the unknown.” A map only gets its lines and colors from what’s observed in the territory.

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HamiltonBrae t1_jbo61l9 wrote

well i think the core of the analogy is just representation vs real thing being represented, rather than a literal map.

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BroadShoulderedBeast t1_jbo6yuw wrote

>Prediction of the unknown is the only worthwhile property of a map.

Not according to the original commenter. If it’s any purpose of a map, predicting the unknown might literally be the last objective of a map. Maps are straightforwardly and primarily about recording what has already been discovered.

The analogy basically works, until you use it to say the opposite of what the objects in the analogy are really for.

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HamiltonBrae t1_jbodo49 wrote

Well okay, now that I've been forced to think about this more deeply I'll agree with OP that maps are about prediction. Why do you use a map? Because you don't know where you are with any great familiarity and need it to make predictions about what will happen if you walk in one direction or another. Prediction is primarily what the validity of a map relies on.

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BroadShoulderedBeast t1_jbpiev9 wrote

A map is not predicting anything, it is a graphic representation of the earth’s surface. A map is a record of the terrain. A map is not created by getting to the edge of a known territory and then extrapolating what might exist in the unknown regions. That’s just not how maps are created. It’s not.

The person holding the map can use the map to understand what the earth will look like when they get to the portion of the terrain the map is meant to represent. Sure, as roads move, buildings change, and construction continues, maps become out of date, but at that point, the map is no longer a representation of the terrain. It doesn’t predict where the roads might move to, what the buildings will look like in ten years, or how a new hill might form. Once the terrain is no longer described by the map, the map ceases to be a map of the terrain and is a historical document of what it used to be.

The analogy works to describe the difference between perception of reality (the map) and reality (the terrain) as a metaphor for a useful representation of an underlying fact of reality without literally being the reality. Beyond that, different analogies are needed.

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HamiltonBrae t1_jbrnwcn wrote

>The person holding the map can use the map to understand what the earth will look like when they get to the portion of the terrain the map is meant to represent.

Yes and this is prediction. I am using a map to predict what I might find if I go walk in a certain direction. This is precisely what a map is used for, allowing us as individuals to predict things we do not have immediate perceptual access to, and is in the same spirit as what any model is for. Maps and the notion of a "useful representation" are meaningless without this notion of prediction.

>It doesn’t predict where the roads might move to, what the buildings will look like in ten years, or how a new hill might form.

Neither does any other model. Models can be wrong, then you just change the model.

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BroadShoulderedBeast t1_jbtmtli wrote

You’re not predicting the shape of the terrain based on the map anymore than you’re predicting what someone’s face looks like based on a photo.

Someone else already created the map and took the photo, it requires no prediction on the reader’s part, and a map itself cannot predict because it is an inanimate objects.

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HamiltonBrae t1_jbw1m4p wrote

A person looks at the map and the map provides them with information that tells them what will happen if they move in a certain direction or whatever. A map can tell someone standing on a road whether if they take the second left hand turn they will come across a church or an open field or a roundabout or another street. Its giving them information about something they cannot immediately access and don't know about. That is a form of prediction, made by the person using the information from the map which is a model of the topographic features of some landscape. If I have never been somewhere before and have no knowledge of its terrain, then I can think of the map as allowing me to make a prediction of the kind of terrain I might expect to see. Its my personal prediction. Maybe you will see it more easily if I use words like knowledge or expectation instead of prediction, but I would be meaning the exact same thing. I don't necessarily mean predicting something no one has ever seen before. This is about the personal knowledge of whoever is using the map. They get knowledge from the map and they use that knowledge to act. That implies prediction. I am not going to embark on a route unless I know whats at the end of it which means I can predict what will happen if I were to go down that route, which is essentially just equivalent to making factual statements about this route and its endpoint which I cannot access immediately from my current position. When I say prediction, I basically just mean the utilization of knowledge, knowing what will happen or what is the case beyond my immediate experience. A map trivially allows this to occur. Even the photo example too: if you have never seen someone before and you have seen their photo, then you suddenly have information about them which you can use in novel contexts, you might be able to recognize them walking down the street.

>map itself cannot predict because it is an inanimate objects

Well so are models. no model is useful unless someone is there to initialize it and put in the parameters, the variables, the initial conditions that need to be used to predict something.

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