Welcome to the 198 new members of the curiosity tribe who have joined us since Friday. Join the 29,071 others who are receiving high-signal, curiosity-inducing content every single week. Share this on Twitter to help grow the tribe!Today’s newsletter is brought to you by M1 Finance!M1 Finance is an all-in-one finance super app - allowing you to invest, borrow, and spend on one easy-to-use, technology-driven platform. I’m a huge fan of their smart dollar-cost averaging features, which take the emotions out of your investment process. M1 has low minimums and offers smart auto-invest, zero commission trades, and so much more. I love the platform and know you will too!Join thousands of other happy customers and open an M1 account today!Today at a Glance:Mental models and maps are representations of reality. They take the complexity of reality and reduce it down to something more manageable.“The map is not the territory” is a meta mental model for assessing and understanding the applicability of mental models. If you don’t understand and appreciate a model’s applicability (or lack thereof) to a given situation, you are certain to get lost.Humans have a tendency to over-apply mental models after we see them work. Awareness and constant reflection is the path to avoid this tendency (and avoid getting lost).When Mental Models AttackIf you’ve been following me on Twitter (or if you’re a long-time subscriber to this newsletter), you know that I enjoy writing about mental models.If you’re new to the term, mental models are simply representations of how the world works. The world is filled with complexity, so we constantly create mental models to help us simplify the complexity by reducing it down to a more manageable representation of fact.In most of my writing, I cover the many successes of mental models - they can be extremely useful tools when applied appropriately. But unfortunately, when misapplied, these "useful" models become anything but.My key point? Mental models are only as good as the soundness of their application. Knowing how and when to apply the different models in your toolkit is just as important as having them in your toolkit in the first place.Today, I’d like to talk about a mental model to help you understand the failings of mental models.Very meta, I know…“The Map is Not the Territory”"The Map is Not the Territory" is a core, foundational mental model for assessing and understanding the applicability of mental models. It's a critical addition to your decision-making toolkit. If you don’t understand and appreciate a model’s applicability (or lack thereof) to a given situation, you are certain to get lost.Let’s begin with some basics. First off, for the purposes of this piece, I will use the terms “map” and “mental model” interchangeably. Both terms can simply be thought of as representations of reality. They take the complexity of reality and reduce it down to something more manageable. Because of the reduction in complexity, they enable faster, higher-powered decision-making.But there are two potential problems:What if you are using the wrong map? Trying to navigate Ohio with a map of Mississippi seems…bad.What if the map is overly-simplified? Trying to navigate a 100-yard stretch of Amazon River rapids with a map of the entire 4,000+ mile river seems…bad.In both situations, the map (your mental model) is not an accurate, helpful representation of the territory (the problem you are looking to solve). Pushing forward in spite of this would be dangerous, perhaps even deadly (in the case of the Amazon rapids!).“The map is not the territory” can be thought of as a simple, intuitive reminder (or mantra?) to constantly understand, evaluate, and critique the validity and applicability of your mental models to a given scenario.HistoryWhere did this concept - of the map, the territory, and their potential mismatch - originate?Well, the general concern has been around for centuries. Explorers have long known about the dangers