This map is not upside down • Hacker News Board

Re: This map is not upside down

#491

Post by Levitz » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

542354234235 wrote: post #459

Levitz wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The direction with which you perceive the mug is not any more arbitrary than that of the map, you are just prioritizing the direction gravity takes rather than its opposite, same as magnetism and the north. You can change your entire system of reference and the setup still makes sense. Same with the map.

A map is a flat, visual representation of an area, showing its features and locations using symbols and drawings. The system of reference can change, like magnetism and north, and the map still functions as a map. A drinking mug is a large, cylindrical cup with a handle, typically made of earthenware, used to hold hot beverages like coffee or tea. The orientation relative to gravity is fundamental to the functioning…

>The orientation relative to gravity is fundamental to the functioning of the mug.

Yes. Changing your system of reference fixes this too. Just get upside down glasses, gravity now goes "up" and the mug is upside down. Works perfectly. You can live like this if you want.

Re: This map is not upside down

#492

Post by 1718627440 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

j4coh wrote: post #468

strken wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steady on now: there's an interesting psychological effect going on. A well known art exercise is to draw a subject upside down, particularly a person or a scene with a clear usual orientation. When you take something you're very familiar with and turn it upside down, you see all the details - volume, shape, distance between points, geometric similarity, colour - with fresh eyes. With art, it becomes easier to draw a…

If you're sitting on the opposite side of a table looking at a map that a person on the other side laid out in front of them, you don't just see the map from the other side? You instead see details about volume, shape, distance between points, geometric similarity, colour, and so on? I sincerely just see the same map even if I'm across the table, except flipped. I'm not sure how it would impact my drawing a map, thou…

I too have no problems reading upside-down, but for some reason I do find it hard to read sidewards.

Re: This map is not upside down

#493

Post by schoen » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

nathan_compton wrote: post #430

schoen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point a character in Eco's Foucault's Pendulum says "archetypes don't exist, the body exists" and then gives some sexual and reproductive examples, followed by > And high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesn’t stink as much, because it’s better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because y…

I think its pretty weird to take this passage at face value. "Foucault's Pendulum" is, at least in part, about how facile this kind of yarn spinning is. Any prejudice or conclusion anyone might like to make is a few waves of the hand away from something that looks like a good argument. Interestingly, Aristotelian physics would have described down as "the true, appropriate place" for material objects and "up" as the u…

I don't remember the context in the book very well, but I remember thinking that the premise was that the speaker here (Lia) was somehow well-grounded in concrete reality, by contrast to the other super-mystical characters in the book -- that she could relate ideas to concrete human experience, while other characters were off in the proverbial cloud-cuckoo land.

Your point about Aristotle is well-taken.

Re: This map is not upside down

#494

Post by hk1337 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:06 PM UTC

In space, there is no up or down, right? So, whether the map is upside down or not should be viewer relative?

Most languages read left to right, top the bottom, so it would make since the relatively important stuff to you be at the top.

Re: This map is not upside down

#495

Post by buran77 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

antognini wrote: post #486

buran77 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ The oldest maps in the world and in Europe are oriented North at the top and the essential feature in the middle. For the Babylonians it was the Euphrates and Babylon itself. For the Europeans it was the Mediterranean. The implication that everyone sees up/North as better means that generations of Greek or Roman cartographers…

> The oldest maps in the world and in Europe are oriented North at the top This isn't true, the oldest maps from the Middle Ages were oriented towards the East. (In fact the very word "orient" refers to the East.) The convention of putting north at the top is only a couple of centuries old.

It wouldn't have killed you to look for something slightly older, seeing how I mentioned Babylon.

The oldest European map, of Greek origin, unsurprisingly has the Aegean at the center, and North pointing up.

Creativity historically played a part in drawing maps but the "up on the map is better" philosophy is rejected by the reality of the first documented maps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps

Re: This map is not upside down

#496

Post by nomel » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

reverius42 wrote: post #333

nomel wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we will continue to do what we currently do: differentiate between magnetic north and "true" north, by applying a local correction, as is already required for navigation with a compass.

A minor correction is quite different from literally flipping the poles.

Depends on your definition of minor. As is, you cannot use magnetic north to navigate, alone, in the east and west of North America. It's 20 degrees off in Oregon, and nearly 40 in northern Alaska. This is something you quickly learn in boy scouts, by getting lost in the woods, if you live on the coast.

But, considering it takes 1,000 to 10,000 years to flip, nobody involved in this will be surprised when they look at their compass. They'll have remembered their local correction from when they were children.

Re: This map is not upside down

#497

Post by potato3732842 » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

CapsAdmin wrote: post #388

jcattle wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is not quite appropriate. An upside down mug is "wrong". The mug looses its meaning and you have to turn it around to use it as a mug. That's not the case with a map. An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map. The fact that it is upside down is not supposed to mind blowing, it's the fact that it isn't upside down at all. We are just used to it being represented this way up, but there's…

Maybe a better analogy would be English and why it's written and read left to right. To me at least, it feels very wrong to see English written right to left, but I also know it wouldn't be objectively wrong.

English (and latin for that matter) is written/read left to right because that is more convenient for the overwhelming majority of the population that is right handed when using easily smudged waxed tablets, wet ink, etc, etc.

Likewise, maps are traditionally "north up" because most of the population lives north of the equator so that's where most maps hailed from and if you're north of the equator having a "north up" map makes celestial navigation slightly easier.

Re: This map is not upside down

#498

Post by constantcrying » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

Given that most of the world is on the northern hemisphere and that almost all people read from top to bottom, it is indeed upside down.

The moralizing is indeed tedious, when something is indeed "wrong".

Re: This map is not upside down

#499

Post by WA » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

onraglanroad wrote: post #423

WA wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_magnetic_pole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass

From your own first link: "Because opposite poles attract, Earth's south magnetic pole is physically actually a magnetic north pole"

Ok I guess I misread: magnetic south pole != south magnetic pole. Got it.

Re: This map is not upside down

#500

Post by duxup » Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

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…

Agreed. The process of finger wagging is counter productive.

I had an HR training session that was intended to help folks see things from other perspectives, but by other perspectives they meant a sort of generic minority perspective ... and a lot of finger wagging.

Nobody enjoyed it. It was all unnecessarily adversarial and represented the shallowest cliches. Nobody thought any of the cliches applied to them about any background because they were so absurd. It was of no use except to make everyone kinda hate HR for wasting their time.

I recall an Obama speech where he noted how telling someone that they have advantages over someone else is not an effective route to influence people. For all you know they think they've had a really hard life ... and maybe they have, you really don't know.