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When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

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Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#131

Post by tshaddox »

rjbwork wrote: post #72
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.

Chesterton's fence. I admit that when I was younger I was much more eager to just tear it all down and start anew...but with experience I have come to see things are never quite so easy. Things are the way they are for a reason, and it is important to know what those reasons are before attempting to modify the things.

The problem with a naive interpretation of Chesterton's fence is that it encourages stasis in cases where we don't have the knowledge or resources necessary to "fully" understand the reasons (or whether any even exist) for the current state of affairs. And in fact, there's no way to guarantee that we "fully" understand all reasons for the current state of affairs. Thus Chesterton's fence essentially deteriorates into the precautionary principle, which is bad epistemology. This quote from Wikipedia's section on criticism of the precautionary principle applies just as well to Chesterton's fence:

"of the two available interpretations of the principle, neither are plausible: weak formulations (which hold that precaution in the face of uncertain harms is permissible) are trivial, while strong formulations (which hold that precaution in the face of uncertain harms is required) are incoherent." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle#The_pr...

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#132

Post by qsdf38100 »

not2b wrote: post #55
qsdf38100 wrote: post #22

I’m sceptical, it’s too easy to cherry-pick data to make it look supportive of one’s political agenda. Not saying it’s the case here, I just wouldn’t trust too much "obvious" patterns and easy to understand maps from a twitter thread. More often than not, such threads are omitting data that doesn’t support the view of the author. Reality is rarely obvious and simple.

Oh, come on: he had numerous examples from all over the world where the political implications are quite different. The author's view was simply that old political boundaries have lingering effects, and he demonstrated that very well.

As I said, I’m not saying it’s the case here. It’s just collateral damage of the disinformation age we live in. I’m not trusting "trends" in data unless I spend 1 or more hours looking it up myself and hoping I can avoid being mislead.

Here I guess it didn’t help that the first map was trying to convey a link between Macron voters and British inhabitants. Anytime I see suggested links between voters, culture, immigration, etc. I’m prudent. It’s surely interesting in its own, but I can’t resist asking myself "why is the author mentioning this? Did he came across this data and then found interesting correlations? Or was he looking for trends that would bring support to some views he has? It’d be ok-ish if such approach was open, like, "here’s my thesis, and here’s data supporting this thesis." But when there’s no thesis, just "interesting trends", pretending it’s up to the reader to make his own conclusions… More often than not, it’s a dishonest cherry-picking with some more or less forced untold conclusions waiting to be made.

So, I just stay away from such articles, even if I know some of them aren’t dishonest. It’s collateral damage of the disinformation war.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#133

Post by antihero »

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…

It isn’t against change, it’s about making the correct change and correct amount of change to achieve the desired result, which can often be no change.

It’s against wanton and unwise change.

Considering nuance in qualification “disclaimed into oblivion” is needlessly derisive.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#134

Post by fsckboy »

bag_boy wrote: post #120
fsckboy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 incl…

I did not know that African Americans got together, had a vote, and decided that they’re happy to live in the US!

no vote necessary, Americans overwhelmingly are glad to live in America, and African Americans are not different.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#135

Post by coddingtonbear »

thereddaikon wrote: post #121
thriftwy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Russia is officially the successor state of the USSR. So legally yes, the USSR is Russia in so far as anyone cares for the purposes of assigning blame.

I don't really want to get involved in this argument, but I think this is a situation where there's just a little bit of missing historical background that might help you two understand one another. What the upstream commenter is referring to is the fact that the land that was historically eastern Poland isn't part of Russia now -- it's part of Ukraine and Belarus. Sure, the USSR (of which Russia is the successor state) is what performed that land transfer, but the land was not transferred to what is now Russia.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#136

Post by EdwardDiego »

fsckboy wrote: post #108
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 incl…

Huh, didn't realise that the Voice of African Americans was a member of HN.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#137

Post by t-3 »

jhgb wrote: post #10

I thought that "political maps" simply meant sovereign state borders (as it does in Czech, German, and possibly other languages as well), and that this would be about unchanging borders. For example Bohemia has had some pretty stable natural borders. But in this case "political map" means a map of election results? Is that a common usage in English?

To clarify what was said by the other respondents, "political maps" referring to sovereign state borders is a term composed of two words (and is probably one word in some other languages?), while "political maps" referring to maps of politics is two terms composed to express a modification of the idea of a map (which is almost always a political map in the first sense unless otherwise stated).

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#138

Post by t-3 »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #85
rodelrod wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting it in these terms, what I'm trying to say is something like: geography → economy → old empire geography → economy → current day politics The biggest caveat to this is that the importance of geography is conditioned by technology, and technology changes over time. So a more detailed model could be something like: geography + current tech → agriculture/commerce/industry/military → economy/culture → politics See…

Makes sense. When you said geography features, I was more thinking of natural barrier (like rivers, mountains): they were very crucial in shaping the old country border, but should have less impact today if both sides are already in the same country . So it's interesting that some of political division are still present around them, which makes me think history has its (unproportional) influence than the geography it…

It's been true throughout history and is still pretty true that most people never leave the area they were born in. This would cause geography, history, and internal politics to overlap in somewhat non-obvious ways.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#139

Post by daveslash »

Robelius wrote: post #129
irrational wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they want to be in Africa? I doubt it. Slavery is bad, but that doesn’t mean it is tragic that the descendants of those slaves are living in America.

I think bag_boy was trying to highlight the tragedy that we can still see direct effects of slavery in the United States, not that it's tragic that descendants of Africans live in America

I can't speak for bag_boy, but yes, that was more or less what I was getting at; while the correlation is fascinating, it's also sad to think about the "why" and "how" behind it. I didn't mean to kick a hornets nest...

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#140

Post by MomoXenosaga »

fsckboy wrote: post #108
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 incl…

I encourage people to read about Liberia. It's one of those hilarious episodes of American- African American relations that makes learning about history so interesting (and they will never teach it at school).
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