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This map is not upside down

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Re: This map is not upside down

#471

Post by vbarrielle »

dragonwriter wrote: post #372
mrighele wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until just a few centuries ago most of the world population was split between Europe (West) and East Asia (East). Plenty of people genuinely believed that if you were to navigate to the West of Europe you would fall off the border of the world (well, some still do).

> Until just a few centuries ago most of the world population was split between Europe (West) and East Asia (East). An outright majority of the world’s population was, and still is, in Asia, so I'm not sure what this split between is supposed to refer to. If you mean Europe was #2 behind Asi, that was true until the 1980s if the Americas are counted as one continent, otherwise the 1990s when Africa took the #2 spot,…

Your parent post meant that a few centuries ago, the american continent was not known, so the known world could be split between east and west.

Re: This map is not upside down

#472

Post by 542354234235 »

Leszek wrote: post #389
blargey wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you feeling down, or are things looking up for you? Do you have people to look up to, or do you spend more time looking down on others? Are you on top of the world, or working your way up from the bottom? Etc, etc. It's suffused throughout our language, and not just this one language, either.

Are you down for looking for counterexamples? Do you want to get to the bottom of why people cherry pick examples for their argument? Is this what you want to base your argument on, or should it be grounded in a more complete linguistic analysis?

Interestingly, except for your first example, yours are all related to building or stacking things and returning to a fundamental, dare I say foundational, aspect.

Also "being down" to do something likely came from writing your name down as a commitment, or putting a bet down, committing your money.

Re: This map is not upside down

#473

Post by vbarrielle »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #51
sivers wrote: post #24

It's also a wonderful metaphor for how the opposite can also be true. Japanese addresses that name the blocks, not the streets: https://sive.rs/jadr West African music that uses the "1" as the end of the phrase instead of the start: https://sive.rs/fela “Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true”, Joan Robinson https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_differe...

Also in the address department: Europe numbers houses roughly sequentially along the whole street, while the Americas (generally) assign house numbers based on the distance to the beginning of the block. And BTW, in the old towns of Sweden and Finland blocks do have names!

There are places in France where the house numbers are based on the distance to the beginning of the block, but it's not that common.

Re: This map is not upside down

#475

Post by Biganon »

patternMachine wrote: post #48

The moralizing that always accompanies (not) upside down maps is so tedious. It's a genuinely interesting example of how something can look so wrong and yet not be wrong at all. To try to extend that "wrong" feeling to some kind of moral failure on the viewers part is just silly. You (or society) are not a bad or prejudiced person for thinking this way, it's just that nearly all maps produced have chosen a different…

Ask 100 random people in the US whether they think "top" is "better associated" with "good" and "down" is "better associated" with "bad", or the other way round. You can even use arrows and randomize the way you ask the question, if you want.

If you come up with a majority of people telling you "down" is "better associated" with "good", I'll live stream myself on Twitch eating the pair of socks I'm currently wearing.

Also, how typical HN to take something that's absolutely obvious and deny it, just so you can escape the terrible idea that you might be subject to unconscious bias.

Re: This map is not upside down

#476

Post by wang_li »

travisjungroth wrote: post #273
whstl wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the southern hemisphere, the only thing more patronizing and infuriating than this is the insistence from the same moralizing group that my country isn’t part of “The West”, despite it being physically and culturally there.

The West only makes sense in the Northern Hemisphere. I’m in Peru right now, and people talk about the local cultures in comparison to Western culture and I find it kind of confusing. They’re certainly not Eastern here. It gets unconfusing if you realize it just means White.

Geographically "The West" only makes sense in Europe and Asia. Once you expand your scope, compass directions are meaningless and the term "The West" refers to certain philosophies, political, and cultural similarities. And even then, it also refers to a certain time frame.

Re: This map is not upside down

#478

Post by Forgeties79 »

vincvinc wrote: post #346
patternMachine wrote: post #48

The moralizing that always accompanies (not) upside down maps is so tedious. It's a genuinely interesting example of how something can look so wrong and yet not be wrong at all. To try to extend that "wrong" feeling to some kind of moral failure on the viewers part is just silly. You (or society) are not a bad or prejudiced person for thinking this way, it's just that nearly all maps produced have chosen a different…

Oh? I think the outrage over making the reader feel like "a bad or prejudiced person" that accompanies any invitation to challenge assumptions is so tedious. How come this culture war mindset infuses everything we do online now? Nowhere does this map or its description even imply you are a bad person. It's pure ... projection

They are probably responding to this:

>Deciding to put south, or north, at the top of maps is a decision of consequence. Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This can influence our interpretation of maps at both global and local scales

I think they are certainly doing a lot of inferring here, but I wouldn't call it "pure projection."

Re: This map is not upside down

#479

Post by hoherd »

I wonder if there is a map with a tilted earth that puts the majority of the landmasses in the middle and the oceans at the edges, in order to have the land viewable with the least amount of distortion for the given projection.

Re: This map is not upside down

#480

Post by [deleted] »

hyperhello wrote: post #2

> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This, of course, is the point of the article. It was so predictable that it made me wonder: who is telling me that top is good and lower is bad? The articles themselves.

[deleted]
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