Mini Ep. 57: The Map Is Not the Territory

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And in this week's mini episode, and for that matter, the next few, I want to dig into some of the mental models that you might have come across if you've, you know, studied popular science or if you happen to train under a Jiu-Jitsu instructor who just really likes this way of thinking. There are a bunch of concepts that you're going to hear over and over again, and it's easy to take them at face value and just believe them as is. But the purpose of this mini episode here is to give you a tool to help you better understand the limits of those concepts and to come to terms with the fact that most mental models really don't apply all the time. They might be useful in some cases, but they all have their limitations. So, in this field, there is a term you might have heard, the map is not the territory. So the name here, the map is not the territory, this comes from the notion that no map, no matter how accurate, is going to be a perfect representation of the territory that it tries to capture. I mean, if you were trying to drive to Seattle, and you had a printed out map, you would expect that map to be an abstraction to some degree. It's not going to be perfect. It's not going to show you exactly down to the inch how long every street is. Everything is going to be a little bit off. There are going to be some landmarks that are either emphasized so that you recognize them more, or maybe they're just not included because the map maker didn't see them as being relevant at the time. The point is that the map is not a completely accurate reflection of the territory that it is describing. And we should expect this, because if it were, the map would be gigantic. If it completely perfectly represented the territory, it would be just as big as the territory. And at that point, the map would be so big and so complex that there would be no use to the map at all, because it's too big and it's too complicated. The purpose of a map is to simplify and to create an abstraction, a simplification that we can use to understand the general idea, while maybe putting aside some of the details that the map maker may not have thought was particularly relevant. So the lesson here, and the reason you will hear systems thinkers and concept people talk about how the map is not the territory. What they're trying to tell you is that whenever you hear a good idea or a good concept, understand that it's an abstraction. It's a generalization. And there are limitations to those ideas. They probably don't apply 100% of the time. And if you assume that the idea that you're working with is 100% accurate, 100% of the time, you're probably going to make some mistakes, because you won't find those places where the map does not perfectly describe the territory. Giving a Jiu-Jitsu specific example, a common concept that I heard all the time coming up in Jiu-Jitsu was that when you are doing an arm bar from the top, you don't want to cross your ankles. You want to pinch your ankles in tight, don't ever cross your ankles. And so for a long time, I just assumed that was a truth that should always be adhered to, until I started hearing other people tell me that, actually, no, you should cross your ankles. And if you're looking for a definitive right or wrong answer here, as to whether you should cross your ankles or not when you're trying a top side arm bar, you're going to be unsatisfied, because there is no definitive answer. The real answer is it depends. And a good map will try to take into account those murky situations where the answer isn't clear, and a good map reader will try to find those situations where the map isn't clear, and understand what to do in those cases if there isn't a definitive answer. So going back to this answer of the arm bar, I mean, my example has always been, I want to keep the far shoulder tight and pinned. I don't want my opponent to be able to rotate out of the arm bar. So, do I pinch or do I cross my ankles? Well, that depends on what feels tighter. My goal is to make them feel like they're immobilized. And the positioning of my feet is less important than keeping their far shoulder immobilized so they can't escape the arm bar. So there's just a simple example of the map and the territory in Jiu-Jitsu. When you hear people talk about concepts in Jiu-Jitsu, they will often either come across as being too absolute in how they present them, or alternately, maybe you will interpret them as being too absolute. And with most concepts in Jiu-Jitsu, they simply don't apply 100% of the time. Maybe they apply most of the time, or maybe they apply in the important situations, but there are very few that are universally true. So whenever you pick up a cool new concept in Jiu-Jitsu, always try to figure out where are the spots where this might not work? Where are the limitations to this idea? Because you never want to be in a situation where you're using a concept that doesn't apply in that situation. That would be the equivalent of using the wrong map when you're trying to get to a destination. So I hope this helps. And again, this is the first in a series of conversations that I'm going to have over the next few weeks in our mini episodes, explaining key popular mental models, both in popular science and in Jiu-Jitsu, hopefully trying to show you where those are useful, but also where their limitations are. The big thing I hope you take away today is understanding that all concepts have limitations, and none of them are universally true, including this one. So if you want more of this, go to BJJmentalmodels.com. That's where you can get all episodes of our podcast and the mini episodes completely free, as well as our newsletter completely free. And of course, I strongly recommend if you are committed to Jiu-Jitsu and committed to developing in this sport, sign up for BJJ Mental Models Premium. The first week is free. BJJmentalmodels.com is where you go to get all of that. I'll put a link in the show notes, but thanks as always for listening and we'll talk to you in the next one.