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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

#291

Post by usrbinbash »

sicariusnoctis wrote: post #280
usrbinbash wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trade-offs between different projections are rarely discussed And? The trade-offs between longpolling and websockets are rarely discussed outside of very small cohorts. The tradeoff between wankel-engines and piston-based motors are rarely discussed. The tradeoffs between oak and pearwood are rarely discussed. That's why our society has division of labor and people becoming experts in their topics. And I am pre…

The issue isn't possible bias on the part of educated cartographers and differential geometers. It's the bias of the majority, i.e. everyone else, that matters. A vast majority of people in the "Western world" perceive their countries as being bigger than they are. Thus from a primal, tribal perspective this further inflates their perception of "their peoples" being more important than the peoples of other areas.

> Thus from a primal, tribal perspective this further inflates their perception of "their peoples" being more important than the peoples of other areas.

And now I would like to see some data, peer reviewed study, or similarly supported source for this statement.

Because I don't see many people claiming that greenland or antarctica are super important powerhouses in the world.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#292

Post by lucb1e »

Regarding "How would fish draw a map?" (image: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... since there's no heading to link to)

Pretty sure I recently learned that fish actually mostly stick to shores and there's little to no migration across open ocean, so they might actually draw that very differently! It was an article about evolution or biodiversity and coastlines, and the article described how genes are transmitted globally despite having separate continents (iirc the waters are shallow enough near the north pole and around oceania to form one long line along all shores), but I can't remember it well enough to find it again. Tried checking it elsewhere but all the relevant-sounding Wikipedia articles don't seem to talk about the ratio of deep sea animals to near-shore animals. Can anyone else confirm or refute this?

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#293

Post by messe »

lucb1e wrote: post #292

Regarding "How would fish draw a map?" (image: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... since there's no heading to link to) Pretty sure I recently learned that fish actually mostly stick to shores and there's little to no migration across open ocean, so they might actually draw that very differently! It was an article about evolution or biodiversity and coastlines, and the article described ho…

You've linked the wrong image (off by one); that one is the sarcastic depiction of the “international community”.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#294

Post by idlewords »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #273
idlewords wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a similar phenomenon of terminology creep with language terms like 'High German' and 'Low German'. This nomenclature has been adopted into fantasy literature to suggest a more noble vs. fallen version of some ancient dialect, but all it meant originally is that 'high' speakers were upstream (and therefore uphill) from the 'low' speakers.

This is one of those 'common misconceptions' where I hear about its refutation more often than I encounter people who believe the supposed misconception. Much like anything talking about map projections, in fact.

You may need to read more crappy fantasy books. To cite a completely representative example, consider 'High Valyrian' from Game of Thrones https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/High_Valyrian, a liturgical language that of course is contrasted with Low (or Bastard) Valyrian, a degenerate family of dialects.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#295

Post by coldtea »

usrbinbash wrote: post #278
coldtea wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they is a "nefarious concentration of power and wealth among the globally powerful countries". And the Mercator projection does suit them practically, and shows their countries bigger than they are, so...

> And the Mercator projection does suit them practically, and shows their countries bigger than they are, so... So what? Do these countries become more powerful, richer, or have more resources than others because they are represented bigger on a common map projection? If so, then let's just hope that our new overlords from the Antarctican Coalition are benign emperors :D

>Do these countries become more powerful, richer, or have more resources than others because they are represented bigger on a common map projection?

No. They become so by colonizing and stealing other's resources. Then the map projections that are convenient for them, are imposed upon the rest of humanity.

This, among other legitimate uses, has the side-benefit for them of presenting said countries as larger than they are, and thus being one more way to subconsciously hammer onto everybody their superiority at that level too...

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#296

Post by KineticLensman »

marc_abonce wrote: post #211
JackFr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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".

Even as a Brit this sometimes catches me out. I live near Bournemouth which is approx in the middle of the south coast of England. If I draw a straight line due North, it's only just inside Scotland. ALL of Scotland is west of London.

Unrelatedly, the other amusing fact is that when the ISS goes overhead (256 miles high at perigee), it is much closer to me than Glasgow (450 miles away).

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#298

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

bentley wrote: post #242
fifafifi wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A globe is not a map projection. With a globe you can only see part of Earth at once.

And that’s the tradeoff of using a globe, whereas the tradeoff of the Peters projection is that the map is distorted in various ways, and the tradeoff of Mercator is that the map is distorted in other ways. Which is why that West Wing clip is, frankly, pretentious, because it doesn’t discuss the negatives of Peters, wrongly implies that it’s “the” correct way to view the world, and makes no mention of other major pro…

To be fair, the West Wing was pretentious in so many other ways that this is one of the few clips that borders on genuinely educational. Flawed? Yes. But it's not an educational show, it's a bizarre hyper-liberal hour-long lecture to the viewer where for some reason every single character talks like an over the hill Jewish man with the same verbal tics and expressions.

And honestly, it's a bit pretentious to publicly denounce an entertaining TV show just to seem smarter than everyone at cocktail parties.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#299

Post by mcv »

defrost wrote: post #290
mcv wrote: post #288

Great article, with one big problem: it's guilty of the exact issue it tries to address: assuming specific map projections as the default. It starts: > Maps twist our perception of the world. > Countries closer to the equator—which happen to be poorer—seem smaller than they are. This is obviously not true for all map projections. It is famously true for the Mercator projection, which we see a lot because it's the bes…

> It is famously true for the Mercator projection, which we see a lot because it's the best projection for navigation, and that's the main thing we use maps for in our everyday lives. The Mercator family is "the best" map family for those who navigate by rhumb lines. I strongly doubt a significant proportion of people on earth navigate by rhumb lines in this day and age, particularly given the vast numbers of GPS ena…

We don't navigate by rhumb lines, we navigate by directions and local shapes, and those are the important things that stay the same in Mercator. If some angles on the map are smaller than they should be while others are larger, that's confusing. Mercator keeps this consistent.

Imagine using a zoomed-in version of Winkel-Tripel to navigate the west coast of the US; that would be pretty terrible.

Of course today with computerised navigation, we don't really have to use a flat projection at all; it would be even more accurate to calculate every view directly from a globe. Have your own custom projection based on where you are.

But if you're going to use a flat map projection for navigation, Mercator is it. Or something Mercatory, at least; centering on Greenwich and having north up is less relevant, although deviating from the latter would probably confuse a lot of people.

And outside of navigation, we really shouldn't ever be using Mercator. I'm not sure if that happens. When I was in school, I remember we had a Goode-Homolosine map on the wall, which is an excellent choice for that. Every map projection has its purposes that it's good at, and those it's not. But especially with the ubiquity of Google Maps, it's not surprising that people get more exposure to Mercator.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#300

Post by p0pcult »

eevilspock wrote: post #198
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)…

Feels like you're pretending that Amero-Eurocentrism is not a thing, that there is no agenda or bias to be examined or criticized. If you've ever played Risk, the Amero-Eurocentrism is extreme. https://cdn.matthewhaeck.com/content/images/2015/02/risk.jpg https://freeprintableaz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/risk-... North America: 9 territories, larger than Africa. Europe: 7 territories, as large as Africa. USA: 3 t…

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