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The topologist’s world map (2020)

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Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#51

Post by eftychis »

School-Cotton wrote: post #37
anonporridge wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geography of the USA, bordered by massive oceans and weak/friendly neighbors along with being a huge and productive landmass with a unified culture, is one of the many reasons why it is unbelievably overpowered as a country, and unlikely to lose its dominance anytime soon. China might be competitive in terms of massive, productive landmass, but it simply will never be as secure in its borders as the US with stron…

Why exactly does having strong rivals on your borders make you any less likely to become a superpower? Is your argument that before China gets strong enough to be considered a superpower, their neighbors will invade them? Or is that they’ll feel insecure about their borders, and allocate resources to their military rather than economic development? Both arguments seem far-fetched. War with one’s neighbors is never gu…

Historically, over the span of centuries war with strong neighbors is certain.

U.S. already had multiple wars where their geography kept their infrastructure and citizens safe. Other countries got obliterated and lost their superpower trait.

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#53

Post by joshuaissac »

klyrs wrote: post #47
hammock wrote: post #29

Is there a mathematical reason why, on the US map, only three types of lines are needed to generate this map- vertical, horizontal and one diagonal? Does that notion generalize to all border maps and if so why? Is it related how border maps can all be colored with only four colors?

> Is it related how border maps can all be colored with only four colors? Actually, that's not generally true. Michigan, for example, violates the axioms behind the four color theorem -- if regions are allowed to have multiple disconnected pieces, a map could theoretically require arbitrarily many colors. For a more pathological example, consider that US embassies are considered "US soil" in an island of their host n…

Embassies are not considered to be foreign territory. The host country gives special privileges to the guest country in accordance with the Vienna Convention.

But there can be an enclave of one country inside another (first-order enclave), as well as enclaves inside enclaves. Dahala Khagrabari was a third-order enclave, an enclave of India inside an enclave of Bangladesh inside an enclave of India in mainland Bangladesh. It was ceded to Bangladesh seven years ago as part of a border gore cleanup treaty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahala_Khagrabari

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#54

Post by xkcd1963 »

todorstoyanov wrote: post #22

Fascinating how protected by their geography are USA, Canada, Ireland and maybe UK. The remaining countries have too many neighbors and, accordingly, potential opponents. Look at the Balkans or part of Africa. I live in Sofia, Bulgaria and it has always seemed silly to me that the reason our city was chosen as the capital was the fact that it is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Now with this war in Ukraine, this…

Well in ancient and medieval times many cities were built in easy to defend locations.

UK got invaded on several occasions historically speaking.

USA/Canada are relatively new countries and had not enough time to diversivy in order to create competing ethnicities.

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#55

Post by abbusfoflouotne »

> It was at some point while I was thinking about adding extra countries to represent seas that it was time to call the automation quits, and just make the map manually. This has some advantages – I get to choose the overall layout, it’s much easier to include stylistic elements, and I don’t have to spend ages describing to a computer what common sense is.

Though this is casually thrown out by the author and empathetically chuckled at by most of us, I this points to a problem worth exploring. In the wake of the hype around recent AI advancements, we can often view computers and software as capable of anything. But often the limits of our current computing systems are made glaringly obvious, such as stylistic design and a "common sense" disconnect articulated here. An area worth our attention and a domain possessing potential for innovation.

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#56

Post by anonporridge »

whatshisface wrote: post #50
anonporridge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it might not be as significant of a problem anymore, because nukes changed the game. Russia and China, or India and China, will never outright invade each other ever again, because of mutually assured destruction. Only countries without nukes have to worry about their sovereignty being violated, e.g. Ukraine. This also means that the geopolitical Schelling point, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(g…

> Only real world power matters. Might makes right. The latter isn't just a rephrasing of the former but an expression of assent to it, and most people probably don't mean that.

It's often hard to tell if a person making an ugly statement is saying it with approval that this is the way things ought to be, or if they are saying it as an observation of harsh reality and they aren't attaching a moral judgement to that observation. Many people then assume the former and label the speaker as malicious when they are simply sharing their observation.

In my view, "might makes right" is simply an observation of harsh reality. Ignoring that reality is folly.

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#57

Post by culi »

abbusfoflouotne wrote: post #55

> It was at some point while I was thinking about adding extra countries to represent seas that it was time to call the automation quits, and just make the map manually. This has some advantages – I get to choose the overall layout, it’s much easier to include stylistic elements, and I don’t have to spend ages describing to a computer what common sense is. Though this is casually thrown out by the author and empathet…

While I generally agree with this sentiment, I don't know if this is a good example.

This doesn't really seem like an impossible problem to me so much as a really complicated one. Something that could likely be solved algorithmically without even the use of AI.

Perhaps it could take information like the size and/or population of different countries to make best guesses on how large to make different parts of it. Even if it produces a best guess that you can then clean up in Inkscape it'd be a tremendous contribution to this task

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#58

Post by iso1631 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #38
wnkrshm wrote: post #3

This is beautiful, especially with the colors on the top right - though I have a nitpick that it is missing an entire continent (probably because it doesn't show up in a list of countries): Antarctica Edit: I now realize it's only supposed to show the graph national borders, though on a political world map, Antarctica is still shown. In a topological fashion, it could be added as a white circle around the entire map.

Antarctica isn’t shown for the same reason the bottom of the ocean or the surface of the moon aren’t shown: there are no countries there. Adding cells that don’t correspond to a country (like your proposed white circle) would make the map less accurate.

Then you get onto the definition of what a country is - there are many countries claiming land in Antarctica.

Re: The topologist’s world map (2020)

#60

Post by gat1 »

todorstoyanov wrote: post #22

Fascinating how protected by their geography are USA, Canada, Ireland and maybe UK. The remaining countries have too many neighbors and, accordingly, potential opponents. Look at the Balkans or part of Africa. I live in Sofia, Bulgaria and it has always seemed silly to me that the reason our city was chosen as the capital was the fact that it is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Now with this war in Ukraine, this…

France's geography is actually also insane as a protection : ocean, seas, mountains or vast forest.
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