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Maps distort how we see the world

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#71

Post by geraldwhen »

retrac wrote: post #21
r3trohack3r wrote: post #12

One of my favorite talks by Carl Sagan talks about the geocentric conceit, and how one manifestation of that is how most civilizations tend to put themselves at the center of the map. There are certainly some good reasons to put yourself there. Most planning for your civilization that calls for a map is going to use “home” as a starting point and you’ll go “out” from there. But it’s still a fun observation. I liked t…

That reminds me of this contemporary Chinese world map: https://priorprobability.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/img_536... It's meant for shipping lanes, mostly. So it puts China in the centre. The shortest route to European and American markets are approximately straight lines. And the Panama canal is at the edge of the world.

I saw a Japanese map recently and it took me a full minute to understand what I was looking at. Japan was at the center, and North America was on the right.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#72

Post by eldaisfish »

js2 wrote: post #45
randcraw wrote: post #10

There was a memorable scene from "The West Wing" on the biases imposed by most map projections, in particular, how Mercator makes North America look huge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI

Probably seen that clip a dozen times and this was the first time I noticed Whitford manspreading in the middle of the clip and Janney batting his leg back. By the look on his face, it seems improvised to get a laugh out of her.

it’s a huge stretch to claim there was no bias involved. the biais is in putting europe front and center and at the top. Have you seen maps that place the americas in the center? How about maps with north and south swapped?

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#73

Post by prepend »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #52
jgeada wrote: post #24

Every flat map projection distorts something, so every projection has to optimize some parameter and trade off other utility. I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! Mercator is and remains popular because it preserves local angles and shapes, which makes it simple use this projection to navigate by rhumb lines (compass headings)…

> Every flat map projection distorts something, so every projection has to optimize some parameter and trade off other utility. I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! That's the point of the post. The trade-offs between different projections are rarely discussed, considered or even mentioned outside very small cohorts because th…

> That's the point of the post.

I lost it in the post. Whenever I hear the “crisis” part presented without the perfectly rational explanation I get frustrated and spend more time trying to figure out if this is a problem.

Saying “maps distort the way we see the world” is a problem unless you immediately follow it with “and that’s ok because…”

Otherwise we waste time on stuff like “eyeballs distort the way we see the world” when it’s true but not an issue at all.

Especially since the first paragraph mentions how countries closer to the equator tend to be poorer. As if that’s somehow relevant.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#74

Post by tony_cannistra »

grogenaut wrote: post #22
HPsquared wrote: post #11

https://earth.nullschool.net has a range of different projections available (on top of the main functionality of the site, which is itself a pretty cool map of wind/weather/atmospheric patterns). The cool thing is that you can pan the map in the different projections, which isn't possible with most maps: most tend to be static images.

Pretty cool to think about the amount of work going on behind the covers to alter these projections on the fly. And how costly it was to build them originally by hand.

work, sure, but not _that_ much. It's affine transformations / some fast linear algebra, for the most part. Your second point is for sure true, though.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#75

Post by kzrdude »

Jun8 wrote: post #6

Interesting post with eye opening stats (even after reading many posts like this I'm still amazed at how big Brazil is!) Another interesting effect maps have on worldview that was not mentioned is the placement of North at the top ( https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/7960/why-is... ). The fact that in the South of Egypt was referred to as "Upper Egypt" has confused me to no end, since "clearly" it's the…

Upper/lower is not weird, if you're used to a country with deep vallies (upper part of valley, lower part of valley, follows the river naming exactly, of course).

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#76

Post by tony_cannistra »

graypegg wrote: post #40
jgeada wrote: post #24

Every flat map projection distorts something, so every projection has to optimize some parameter and trade off other utility. I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! Mercator is and remains popular because it preserves local angles and shapes, which makes it simple use this projection to navigate by rhumb lines (compass headings)…

Exactly! This article mostly avoids it but the usual popsci refrain of “the map you know is WRONG” is a pet peeve of mine! It’s not like one projection is any worse than another, as long as they are useful for the context it’s designed for. Maps are diagrams!

and all maps are WRONG

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#77

Post by prepend »

bluepod4 wrote: post #44
jgeada wrote: post #24

Every flat map projection distorts something, so every projection has to optimize some parameter and trade off other utility. I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! Mercator is and remains popular because it preserves local angles and shapes, which makes it simple use this projection to navigate by rhumb lines (compass headings)…

> I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! Hmm. That’s not usually how the discourse goes. It’s never “wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y. That’s terrible.” It usually goes something like “wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y. This distorts our worldview and makes us think things we shouldn’t have thoug…

> But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after seeing the other projection.

That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important?

Did you ever check out how small Britain or Spain or Portugal or Netherlands were to the size of their empire.

Do you now think that Indonesia is more important because of its size?

I would expect that revelations about population would be more worldview adjusting (Nigeria and Indonesia are so huge).

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#78

Post by fknorangesite »

NoRelToEmber wrote: post #61
luxurytent wrote: post #50

The overlay of Canada on Europe is always a fun one. We moan so much here (perhaps rightfully so) about lack of public transit and reasonable infrastructure to get around, but we're also comparing a population of (just recently hit!) 40,000 and ~700,000. Orders of magnitude larger, but roughly same land area. This is why I am hugely in support of increased immigration into Canada, housing crisis aside (it'll resolve…

> Orders of magnitude larger, but roughly same land area. You should compare the populated area, not the entire landmass. That there exist vast unpopulated frozen tundras nominally within Canadian borders does not hinder public transport any more than Siberia hindered building the Moscow metro.

Seriously. Half the population is in southern Ontario. There's no reason we can't have a serious high speed rail line TorontoQuebec City that would serve - without exaggeration - most Canadians.

I forget where I read this phrase first, but: every flight in this corridor is a policy failure.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#79

Post by prepend »

eldaisfish wrote: post #72
js2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably seen that clip a dozen times and this was the first time I noticed Whitford manspreading in the middle of the clip and Janney batting his leg back. By the look on his face, it seems improvised to get a laugh out of her.

it’s a huge stretch to claim there was no bias involved. the biais is in putting europe front and center and at the top. Have you seen maps that place the americas in the center? How about maps with north and south swapped?

Maybe more accurate is that there wasn’t some nefarious bias that was meant to oppress people.

Europe was at the center because they made the maps. It’s a simple reason. If some other culture has been dominant we’d be using a projection that makes it more useful for them.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#80

Post by MalcolmDwyer »

luxurytent wrote: post #50

The overlay of Canada on Europe is always a fun one. We moan so much here (perhaps rightfully so) about lack of public transit and reasonable infrastructure to get around, but we're also comparing a population of (just recently hit!) 40,000 and ~700,000. Orders of magnitude larger, but roughly same land area. This is why I am hugely in support of increased immigration into Canada, housing crisis aside (it'll resolve…

90% of Canadians live in a "small" strip of land that is comparable in size to Europe. That area (along with several regions and city pairs in the US) could have excellent inter-city and intra-city transit. But we just don't.

Canada and the US are lacking in good public transit because as a society we've made the choice to build for cars and not build for people. Almost everything about our built environment is optimized for cars and the result is sprawl. The cause is our public policies, building regulations, and zoning.

It has nothing to do with the size of the country, because people don't try to commute across the country, just like people who live in Paris generally don't commute to Berlin every day. The vast majority of travel is local and occasionally regional.

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