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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

#211

Post by marc_abonce »

JackFr wrote: post #94
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…

> The trade-offs between different projections are rarely discussed, considered or even mentioned outside very small cohorts Not true. They're honestly discussed all the time to the point of becoming tiresome.

I've seen this type of post/thread many times, and yet I still learn something new every time.

For example, I'd never noticed until today that so much of Scotland is actually west of England because Great Britain doesn't actually go straight-up north to south but is rather "tilted".

I also didn't know that Papua was so big, before today I wondered how could there be so much linguistic diversity in what I though was a medium sized island.

So I don't mind the geography trivia from time to time.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#212

Post by brightlancer »

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…

> I think you should be more amazed at people who _don’t_ care at _all _ about size. Sure, this group might include reasonable people like yourself who are knowledgeable about map distortions and trade offs. But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group.

On what are you basing it?

IME, almost nobody cares. Even folks who like maps (e.g. me) "don't care" in most cases, because flat maps will have distortions.

AFAICT, the people who really care about these distortions are folks who have political agendas and like to sling ad hominems around, such as "Folks who don't care are morons or racists."

So again:

> But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group.

On what are you basing that?

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#213

Post by oakashes »

slibhb wrote: post #3

> Countries closer to the equator—which happen to be poorer1—seem smaller than they are. Depends on the projection you use and its parameters. The "Web Mercator is racist" meme is just lazy. One way around the issue is rendering a globe on a screen. Google maps does this when you zoom out far enough. By the same token, if you're using a screen, it's possible to dynamically reproject a map based on whatever is centere…

> One way around the issue is rendering a globe on a screen. Google maps does this when you zoom out far enough.

This isn't a way around the issue because the screen is two-dimensional so you are still showing a projection of the globe. I think Google uses the perspective projection when you zoom out enough.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#214

Post by prepend »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #159
prepend wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (Nig…

>That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important? If it wasn't, why was so much of history spent fighting over it?

History was spent fighting over valuable resources, not sheer size.

No one fought much over Canada and Siberia and they are huge.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#215

Post by prepend »

goodbyesf wrote: post #188
prepend wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (Nig…

> That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important? Yes. That and population. Generally, the larger and more populous countries tend to be the most powerful and influential. > Did you ever check out how small Britain or Spain or Portugal or Netherlands were to the size of their empire. Ever wonder why britain, spain, portugal and netherlands expanded their landmass by creating their empires? Ever wond…

> Generally, the larger and more populous countries tend to be the most powerful and influential.

But this is obviously not true. Just look at the list of top 10 by GDP and check out how many of them are relatively small.

I mean you have to have natural resources and can’t be tiny, but it’s not like Germany and Japan are powerful because of their landmass.

I think judging countries by their size is a mistake in rationality and people shouldn’t do that. It’s only silly people who look at Greenland on a Mercator map and think that they are powerful based on size.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#216

Post by SamBam »

dredmorbius wrote: post #197
philshem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I received a gift from a friend in Uruguay that is from the clockmaker Girosur. The clock runs backwards, rhetorically asking “why is North up?” https://girosur.com/como-funcionan/

"Clockwise" is the angular direction that the shadow of a northern-hemisphere sundial appears to move.

Right, that's one of the points that clock is making.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#218

Post by SamBam »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #182

The claim that "when you look at the Pacific Ocean on a globe, you only see water" is incorrect. I've seen a few attepts to make this claim appear as if it were real. Like the image in the article, it's just a perspective projection from a low altitude. If you actually grab a globe, you'll see there is no way to cut it in half with only water on one side. If there were a way to do that, we could save a lot of money o…

Right, but when you look at a globe, you're actually seeing less than half of it, unless it is small enough or you are far enough.

If you're closer, you can definitely see less land. The "perspective projection" is correct.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#219

Post by awongh »

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 feel like you actually stated the problem but then glossed over it.

Mercator is UX optimized for naval navigation. Besides street navigation (where projection is irrelevant) I would posit that most people use maps for human geography reasons- what countries are next to Senegal, what kind of border does Thailand have with Malaysia, etc.

In the use case of understanding geopolitical borders Mercator isn’t optimized for that.

Asking why people are dissatisfied with mercator is like asking why my grandma is dissatisfied with the command line interface on the Linux laptop I got her. Doesn’t she know it’s the best for programmers??

Why are we trading off the accuracy of political borders for navigating by rhumb lines?

I personally feel like a better projection would be one that basically ignored or distorted the oceans. On google maps there’s no reasons why the proportions of the Atlantic or Pacific would be relevant.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#220

Post by cpuguy83 »

NoRelToEmber wrote: post #144
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?

Unilaterally? If they want to use maps that center Asia in their education and work, who is stopping them? In fact I'd wager they start their education by learning about the geography of Asia first. I'm puzzled by this demonization of simply observing the world from the perspective of one's own culture. Blaming Europeans for putting Europe in the center of their maps is like blaming Italians for teaching Italian in s…

Saying there is a bias is not an accusation of wrong doing or "demonization".
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