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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

#171

Post by imgabe »

This seems to come up a lot lately. I don't see why this matters. If you're doing something like charting a flight path where it actually matters what the real sizes are, I'm sure you have access to the correct information. If you're just going about your normal life as a dental hygienist or something, what difference does it make if Russia is not as big as you assume?

> Are these maps chosen for good reasons and these distortions are a side-effect, or are they purposefully deceitful? Are there better maps we could choose? I’ll explore this in the premium article this week. Subscribe to read it!

Ah, I see. It's just bait to drive subscriptions. You can read for free on Wikipedia about why the Mercator projection is useful for navigation.

What is wrong with people that they assume there is some evil cabal of mustache-twisting villains who deliberately make misleading maps?

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#172

Post by [deleted] »

prepend wrote: post #158
cebsoto wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as the post is simply pointing out something that a large percentage of the population was not even aware about. I don't think it goes any deeper than that.

Why is it important that poor people live near the equator? I expect that a large part of the population is aware of this fact. So bringing it up doesn’t contribute to the article and is a bit off in the article. Why not mention that the days are longer in the summer away from the equator. Or they people near the equator have darker pigment. Or many other true but irrelevant facts.

[deleted]

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#173

Post by mc32 »

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…

You know whose problem this is. The map buyer/owner. They can buy whatever projection fits their fancy. I happen to have Robinson projections at home because I don't prefer the cylindrical projection. I used to have homolosine projections but they were funky in other ways. Preferably people would have a Globe and also have some flat projections.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#174

Post by jeroenhd »

idatum wrote: post #69
interroboink wrote: post #33

I have a poster of a South-up map[1], which is fun to look at and wiggle those expectations in my mind from time to time. Hobo-Dyer[2] is also an interesting projection. [1] https://www.mapsinternational.com/upside-down-political-worl... (just an example; you can find others) [2] https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343348

Makes me wonder why South isn't intuitively "up" for folks in the Southern Hemisphere.

I imagine having your maps rotated compared to most of the world (90% of humanity lives in the northern hemisphere) would probably be a pain to deal with.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#175

Post by luxurytent »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #106
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…

> housing crisis aside (it'll resolve over time) And fuck all the suffering along the way? Honestly Canada needs to address that before it can even begin to start thinking about more immigration. Canada is not even vaguely equipped to handle more people as it stands now.

Never said that there is no suffering along the way. It is terrible and we've made mistakes, but there's only so much scope I can fit into a comment!

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#176

Post by Exoristos »

idlewords wrote: post #36
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…

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.

Great example. And the Alemannisch dialect is "hoch hoch Deutsch," or extra-high German, being from way up in the German-speaking Swiss Alps.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#177

Post by jeroenhd »

netsharc wrote: post #109
Fauntleroy wrote: post #13

This is why I'm glad Google maps is available in a 3d globe! Even at relatively close zoom levels the subtle differences in scale are really noticeable. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure how to get Google Maps to always start up in the 3d sphere mode. Half the time in firefox it just reverts back to a flat map.

It'd be pretty cool if they can show the map in the Mercator projection with a center the user can choose, as well as which way is up...

Try https://www.worldmapgenerator.com/en/

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#178

Post by Exoristos »

idatum wrote: post #69
interroboink wrote: post #33

I have a poster of a South-up map[1], which is fun to look at and wiggle those expectations in my mind from time to time. Hobo-Dyer[2] is also an interesting projection. [1] https://www.mapsinternational.com/upside-down-political-worl... (just an example; you can find others) [2] https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343348

Makes me wonder why South isn't intuitively "up" for folks in the Southern Hemisphere.

Save reason they observe Yule at midsummer.

Re: Maps distort how we see the world

#179

Post by Exoristos »

dontupvoteme wrote: post #162

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 neve…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_overseas_colonies?wprov... Everybody tried to take over the world in that era. Hell, the Scots had Panama at one point.
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