A map that was accurate in 1890 doesn't become less accurate because you're loyal to it — it becomes dangerous. The Polish-American thinker Alfred Korzybski made this the cornerstone of General Semantics: the map is not the territory, but more precisely, we confuse the two because the map was once so useful that we stopped checking it against the terrain. The mental models that now run your product thinking weren't adopted as beliefs — they were earned as hard-won conclusions. That's exactly what makes them resistant to revision. The practical move here is calibration, not demolition: pick one model you use fluently — 'users want simplicity,' 'engineers underestimate scope,' 'the loudest stakeholder reflects the market' — and treat it like a legacy system. Not broken, probably. But last audited when?

Name the mental model you've used most automatically this week — then trace it back to the specific experience that first made it feel true. Does that origin still apply?

Drawing from General Semantics — Alfred Korzybski (Science and Sanity, 1933)