Comment by Terretta

To me it means a system that I can model things on with enough fidelity I find the results predictive if I go do it for real. Not a control panel, an alternate reality.

Actual twins don't occupy the same space time on the same 4D trajectory.

For the sake of the metaphor, both should respond the same way to the same inputs. You can, for instance, run two medical lab tests using two twins in parallel and get interchangeable results.

That said, I imagine when this twin is sufficiently faithful, one could first issue state convergence commands until the digital twin mirrored the real, and then overlay an orchestrator to do things perhaps you're thinking of such as: if digital deploys of config changes work, then the same change is applied to the real.