# Maps help you understand the state of something If you don’t understand the state of something better after looking at a map, it’s not doing its job. Maps are always an abstraction ([[The Map is not the Territory]]) so there is always something about the state of the thing being mapped that the map will not capture. However, this is not always a bad thing! You can think of a map as compressing and structuring knowledge similar to how [[Jargon is a mechanism for compressing information]]. The compression mechanism means that a map is always going to be opinionated about what is signal and what is noise. Therefore, the design of a map should never be independent of its audience. [[More context can decrease the signal to noise ratio of communication for people who already have that context]]. A [[Stock and Flow Models]] *can* be a map, if it reflects the state of reality, but is not necessarily a map. ### Related * [[Structuring knowledge is expensive]] * [[Maps are multi-scale]] * [[Maps help you figure out possibilities]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Maps+help+you+understand+the+state+of+something) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Maps+help+you+understand+the+state+of+something)