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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

#141

Post by mike00632 »

whycombinetor wrote: post #115
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…

What's heartbreakingly tragic about this? Your statements reads as if a county having a high percentage of African American residents is negative.

I think you're ignoring the mistreatment of Black people in the black belt. For example, recently when Alabama instituted its voter ID laws it closed every DMV in the black belt so that Black people wouldn't have access to get IDs and vote.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#142

Post by bag_boy »

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

That’s right - thank you

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#143

Post by dillondoyle »

whycombinetor wrote: post #115
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…

What's heartbreakingly tragic about this? Your statements reads as if a county having a high percentage of African American residents is negative.

The naming irony / play on words. It's tragic because of this fertile 'black belt' slavery was able to exist profitably in that region.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#145

Post by codefreeordie »

fguerraz wrote: post #16

This seems to be complete BS to me: all I see in these maps is a lot of confirmation bias, the author really sees what he wants to see. Some maps do overlap very well but in that case it only looks interesting because we want to see a causation link where there is correlation. So sorry for the harsh words but I actually find this upsetting.

Is this actually different from when Matt Parker discovered ancient alien wisdom by plotting the lines between Woolworths stores?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JwEYamjXpA&t=2461s)

Some of these maps are for time period not that distant from each other where the correlation is pretty straightforward, and those are probably telling at-least-partly-true narratives. For others, it's less clear. How many different modern and ancient maps are there which could conceivably have interesting (spurious) correlations?

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#146

Post by kllvql »

yolo69420 wrote: post #56
kllvql wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely understand your point. Misinterpreting correlation with causation is something that frequently bothers me in writings and discussions. In this case, however, I did find the correlations the author pointed out interesting. I did not interpret this as causal (the author may have made that claim, but I was more interested in the maps). I still found it really cool to see how much an impact geography and pat…

I don't quite think you understand. The data presented here absolutely does not allow for the conclusions you make particularly in your second paragraph. In fact the reality could be exactly the opposite way (i.e. geography has no influence on things like modern election results whatsoever) and you wouldn't know it based on this data. Think about the countless numbers of ways you could overlay any sort of historical…

You're correct. I was saying that correlation implied either causation or at least a common cause, and you correctly point out that there can be (edit: and frequently are) spurious correlations. The desire to see causal effects is strong in us humans, and it is easy for us, me especially, to fall prey to this logical fallacy.

For people who would like to see a demonstration of the effect yolo69420 is pointing out, you can visit the website below [1]. It, among other things, shows how Nicholas Cage movies are correlated with swimming pool drownings.

I completely agree that the Twitter post does not prove there is a direct causal relationship between the maps they compare, nor even that there exists a common cause. I would contend that this is a very high standard to hold for interesting content on the internet. If you would like to hold to this standard, you will likely come to more robust and defensible conclusions than myself.

I find it fun to speculate on possible common causes. If I had any actual ability to change things based on my conclusions, I'd likely increase my burden of proof to a much higher level like you suggest.

[1] http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#148

Post by sgjohnson »

thriftwy wrote: post #117
klausjensen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian delusions around WW2 are astonishing. They (USSR was Russian-lead) were literally allied with Nazi-Germany and agreed to split Europe with them. They executed 20000+ Polish people in Katyn alone.

Yes, USSR had a pact with Nazi Germany. Until it hadn't. So?

So USSR was exactly as guilty in WW2 happening as Nazi Germany. USSR was not one bit better.

Re: When old historic maps overlap with modern political maps

#150

Post by philosopher1234 »

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.

You’d love Freud
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