Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 182 posts

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#101

Post by BenoitP »

There's an interesting one linking geology and politics in the north of France, kinda like the Alabama one:

A coal basin [1] predicts low revenues [2] and political votes for far right [3].

I'm no political or demographical historian, but the gist of the story IMHO is that there was a coal boom. People settled there, and not much else was invested in the region. So when coal mines went bust, no other industry could convert the workers; it created low revenue zones and it fed discontent, which can be seen in the votes.

"Au nord, c'était les corons", as the song says. [4]

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassin_minier_du_Nord-Pas-de-C...

[2] https://www.comeetie.fr/galerie/francepixels/#map/revenus/Rd...

[3] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/infographies-resultats...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coron_(house)

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#102

Post by philwelch »

pstuart wrote: post #91
weeksie wrote: post #13

Whenever I see this kind of persistence, it underscores how important path dependency is when trying to understand how things got to be the way they are. From legacy software to political systems, when there's cruft or weird behavior there's almost always some environmental factor that shaped the decision to build it that way, even (especially) if the people who made the decision weren't conscious of why.

Brings to mind the 5 monkeys experiment: https://www.proserveit.com/blog/five-monkeys-experiment-less...

This experiment is one of my pet peeves, at least in terms of how it's usually used as a parable. Yes, in this particular situation, the monkeys are being irrational. But they are only being irrational because they are in a completely artificial environment that was deliberately constructed for the purpose of gaslighting them.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#103

Post by [deleted] »

jjoonathan wrote: post #100
api wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is important to know what those reasons are before attempting to modify the things. People misinterpret Chesterton's fence as an argument against changing things, but it's actually just about what I quoted above. It has no verdict on whether or not something should be changed. It just argues that you should make a strong effort to figure out why it is how it is before attempting to do so. I'd argue that if you d…

> It has no verdict on whether or not something should be changed. Hard disagree. The difficulty of discovering the reasons for Chesterton's Fence and the impossibility of ever being certain that you have discovered them all means that it actually is a general prescription for caution / against change. Of course, as always, it comes down to a judgement call. Do you understand the reasons for Chesterton's Fence well e…

[deleted]

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#105

Post by agapon »

thriftwy wrote: post #96
adrian_b wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes indeed. The Poland of after WWII has a similar area with the Poland of before WWII, but it has moved a lot towards West. So the winners have been the Russians and the losers have been the Germans. Poland was lucky because its large territorial losses to the Russian invaders have been somewhat compensated with territories taken from Germany. The other Western neighbors of Russia have been much less lucky. The larg…

The german territories were given to Poland by USSR, not taken by Poland. With regards to eastern territories, Poland may reclaim some of those right now if it is insistent :)

Russian troll detected.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#106

Post by philwelch »

Spellman wrote: post #83
api wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is important to know what those reasons are before attempting to modify the things. People misinterpret Chesterton's fence as an argument against changing things, but it's actually just about what I quoted above. It has no verdict on whether or not something should be changed. It just argues that you should make a strong effort to figure out why it is how it is before attempting to do so. I'd argue that if you d…

Yup. I've often seen Chesterson's Fence trotted out as an argument to never change anything. Or at least place onerous burden of proof on the new change to prove itself. However, some times the circumstances that gave rise to the fence are gone! You still need to do the work to show that this is true, or at least some best effort. But if after a cursory check there is no compelling reason, retorting "ah but there may…

I think plenty of people err on either side of this question. It's an eternal controversy, and as you say, there is a balance.

That having been said, I also think you're underestimating the degree to which it's easy to verify the value of legacy practices.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...

Search for the phrase "And then there’s manioc. This is a tuber native to the Americas." Read the extended block quote afterwards and the first few paragraphs after the block quote. If anything, Chesterton's Fence is insufficient--if a certain practice works, it sometimes works for reasons that even the practitioners can't explain.

Furthermore, I can point to numerous examples of catastrophic failure directly caused by insufficient status quo bias, like tearing apart cities because it's the 20th century and we need to build freeways straight through the middle of them, or communism. So it's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#107

Post by philwelch »

jjoonathan wrote: post #100
api wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is important to know what those reasons are before attempting to modify the things. People misinterpret Chesterton's fence as an argument against changing things, but it's actually just about what I quoted above. It has no verdict on whether or not something should be changed. It just argues that you should make a strong effort to figure out why it is how it is before attempting to do so. I'd argue that if you d…

> It has no verdict on whether or not something should be changed. Hard disagree. The difficulty of discovering the reasons for Chesterton's Fence and the impossibility of ever being certain that you have discovered them all means that it actually is a general prescription for caution / against change. Of course, as always, it comes down to a judgement call. Do you understand the reasons for Chesterton's Fence well e…

I think the way you're conflating "for caution" and "against change" is a bit of sleight of hand though. I would definitely agree that it's a prescription for caution, but not necessarily against change.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#108

Post by fsckboy »

daveslash wrote: post #39

Something similar that I find both fascinating and heart-breakingly tragic: The "Black Belt" in the U.S. Deep South. The Black Belt is both a geological term used to refer to the rich & dark soil [0] and a geopolitical term to refer to the high percentage of African Americans [1]. During the Cretaceous period, the shore-line at the time ran through the middle of Alabama and Mississippi, depositing rich organic deposi…

> heart-breakingly tragic

African Americans are glad to be living in the US, and they're deeply enmeshed in the fabric of American society. Slavery was a bad part of history (and of the present where it still exists) but it's not more "heart-breakingly tragic" that a large number of African Americans today live on fertile land in the Old South any moreso than a large number of Aficans living on all sorts of land including not-so-fertile in Africa.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#109

Post by thriftwy »

agapon wrote: post #105
thriftwy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The german territories were given to Poland by USSR, not taken by Poland. With regards to eastern territories, Poland may reclaim some of those right now if it is insistent :)

Russian troll detected.

Seriously though, all of these russophobic eastern european countries are like: "Russia took our lands".

First of all, it was not Russia but USSR who took your lands; second, USSR did not give these lands to Russia (even in the form of RSFSR) but to other russophobic eastern european countries.

You are grown-ups now. Sort it out between yourselves.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#110

Post by valarauko »

InitialLastName wrote: post #69
soared wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that these are all cause and effect, but just interesting overlays. The Mexico one is clear to Americans - people who immigrate from Mexico choose to stay nearer to Mexico. Similar cultures, weather, etc. The areas previously being a part of Mexico is just coincidence.

There were a substantial number of people of Spanish-Imperial descent (of a variety of conditions) who didn't just move south when the border moved. Even now you see old families who identify as Mexican with the submotto "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us". Keep in mind that much of that area was under Spanish and/or Mexican control for almost twice as long as it has been in the US (~1550-1846 vs 1846…

Do we have any numbers for how many Mexican-Americans are of this descent?
Post reply on HN