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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

#161

Post by Tade0 »

heikkilevanto wrote: post #147
yunohn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of items are manufactured in Asia now, especially globes. By your logic, should they unilaterally start printing Asia in the center?

Globes?? They do not suffer (much?) from the map projection problem. And no, they should not be printing any part of the world in the center of the globe!

> Globes?? They do not suffer (much?) from the map projection problem.

They do if you try hard enough. Introducing the infamous Poland Globe:

https://www.maproomblog.com/2020/09/these-globes-are-uncanny...

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#162

Post by dontupvoteme »

A hot take perhaps but now I'm curious -- Is this an American/New World/Big-Ass-Country (I could see Russia/China caring) phenomenon?

A lot of British people, especially when being smug and nationalist online, speak about how their tiny island took over so many other big places.

I never asked a Frenchman and obviously it's in bad form to ask the Germans...

The Scandis ""benefit"" the most from the distortion but never really had empire apart from in the neighboring areas, so I don't know if they ever think about it.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#163

Post by dontupvoteme »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #86
the_af wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get a non-Mercator projection map and put it in your dinner room, and then see how many of your guests will comment about "so.. why is this map weird? It doesn't look right?" then tell them "every flat map projection distorts [...]" This is actually a pretty cool conversation topic during dinner. I would take the opportunity to show off. It doesn't have to be a downside. "Hey, did you know that [interesting stuff].…

yeah, I think it would be an interesting discussion topic. Especially if you could show the 6th figure from that post (the one showing the 7,500km distortion). It just depends on how you put it. OPs remarks were condescending as if the only reason to bring this up is "because of size hang ups" as oppose to "bring this up to question your own basic wrong assumptions about the world" It's far from common knowledge or a…

Is it that surprising/arbitrary though?

1. It's very useful for sailing

2. European nations who were good at sailing created the age of empires (yes this was a bad thing)

3. These empires persisted until the end of WW2 (1945) or arguably even the Suez crisis (1956) at which point the American/Soviet world order began

Changing a map is changing everyone's internal worldview, and for obvious reason empires were not about to allow such a massive change unless they had a good reason[0] so It's really only been about 80 years and most of them we were at war with the Soviets, so when we thought about maps, we thought about if they were red or star spangled, not which projection.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just not at all surprised we have the "original" one.

0 - I could easily see an alternate history where e.g. the Spanish and/or Portugese use a different one if it makes them look "better" than the English, or vice versa. Now i'm curious of what projection could be 'anglo/iberi-maximal'

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#164

Post by p0pcult »

thfuran wrote: post #116
prepend wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't understand what you're saying. The article doesn't present this as a crisis. It doesn't really make sense to say it's okay or not okay, except insofar as anything that isn't an existential threat is okay, I suppose.

The second sentence of the article strongly implies some nefarious concentration of power and wealth among the globally powerful countries is at the root of the popularity of mercator projections.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#165

Post by nilmask »

thrashh wrote: post #111
eddythompson80 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

People have a problem with this post and these kind of posts because they imply it was deliberately done for evil reasons. The point of any article isn't just its factual content; it's the hidden message from the way it's said. I don't know if you intended to say it the way you did when you started off with the comment about poverty in the first two sentences, but by doing so, you set the tone for the rest of your ar…

> People have a problem

Why do you presuppose that others infer & arrive at the same interpretations you do? Isn't your own form of generalization from the subjective inferences made from your own individual mind, to the thoughts of others, presumptuous?

I'm getting tired of the progressive tendency to read offence, bigotry, racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. into every little word & minutiae of nuance uttered by others. It's on the verge of induced pareidolia for outrage & victimhood.

Do you reside or hail from one of the aforementioned countries, or are you merely "signal boosting" and getting outraged on their behalf?

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#166

Post by dontupvoteme »

prepend wrote: post #79
eldaisfish wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

IMO Simply moving the Mercator projection to be centered on China is far more meaningful than changing the projection. The entire world revolved around China and trading with it for thousands of years, and you much more immediately understand things such as

1. The importance of the silk road and the middle east. (and thereby the importance of controlling that region and thus the legacy of the Byzantines and later Ottoman Empire. To say nothing of Persia, The Greeks, etc)

2. The nature of the Eurasian steppes (It's staggeringly big and OP for horses)

3. The tendency to forget about those big oceans of certain death, as they were for tens of thousands of years. Europeans only sailed through them to get to china and avoid paying taxes to Muslims, after all.

4. Why, given the above, the Chinese call the 1840s to 1940s the "Century of humiliation"

I'm sure I'm omitting a lot of stuff but That was Human History for much longer than the Euroamerican order

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#167

Post by sltkr »

midasuni wrote: post #35
Freebytes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students rarely even look at a globe, though. They see many more maps online.

Especially the southern hemisphere, as their head is normally above the globe

Have you ever seen a globe? They are always tilted so you can easily view countries below the equator.

Besides, 90% of the world population lives above the equator, so if there is a slight bias towards making the northern hemisphere more easily viewable, that's entirely justifiable. That includes 1.4 billion people living in India, another 1.4 billion living in China, etc.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#168

Post by gerdesj »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #90
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

Except Mercator wasn't German. He was born in the County of Flanders, current day East Flanders and moved to Germany at the age of 40. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator

"5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594"

Everything was a bit complicated in that region in the medieval period. In the C16, you immediately come up short with the concept of "Germany".

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#170

Post by mc32 »

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)…

The biggest miss on maps (and no fault of cartography, as there is no way to represent this well) is height and depth. The heights of mountains and the depths of water --it's hard to understand how shallow bodies of water are when compares to linear distances: the deepest part of the ocean is less distance linearly than the width of the city of SF.
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