[HN Gopher] The world map that reboots your brain
___________________________________________________________________
The world map that reboots your brain
Author : mariuz
Score : 152 points
Date : 2022-08-20 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (axbom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (axbom.com)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Hmm... uptime 20:49:05 up 15340 days, 32
| min, 1 user, load average: 0.22, 0.41, 0.32
|
| Guess not.
| wikitopian wrote:
| At no point in the past thirty years has the Mercator Projection
| been discussed without a disclaimer that it's very distorted.
| pnathan wrote:
| Back when I was working for a company that was heavily into GIS,
| I wandered one day into map rendering code, trying to render
| _something or other_, and man, it was an ed-u-cation. Not in
| "yeah Mercator is not literally true" (this I thought was common
| knowledge) but also there there are a ton of different
| projections and ways to deal with said projections.
|
| It's a fascinating niche of computer graphics.
| amelius wrote:
| I don't know about others, but when I saw a 3d globe model as a
| child with all the countries in their proper relative sizes, my
| brain didn't reboot.
| glitchc wrote:
| ghostpepper wrote:
| A flat sheet of paper can't wrap a globe seamlessly - that's
| why projections are created in the first place.
|
| An actual globe doesn't have that problem.
| glitchc wrote:
| see posted video. An actual globe is created from flat
| sheets of paper cut into strips and stuck on. Printing a
| curved surface on a flat plane is by definition a
| projection.
| Tagbert wrote:
| yes, it is and that is why they use small flat sections
| of paper to compose a globe. By doing that they minimize
| the distortions of flat maps to be point of being too
| small to matter.
|
| Your "gotcha" about how globes are made is much ado about
| nothing.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Yes, but they don't just print out a Mercator map and
| glue that to the surface. They use a projection that is
| going to produce the final appearance that they're aiming
| for.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If only there was a way to apply paint directly to a curved
| surface.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Or to cut paper in something other than straight lines
| zaik wrote:
| No: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RWcWSN4HhI
| glitchc wrote:
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| MULTIPLE thin strips of paper. Any distortion will be
| minimal, compared to a big flat piece of paper.
| [deleted]
| kryptiskt wrote:
| I had a globe as a kid, it had a topographical map when unlit and
| a political one when lit (with borders and country names). I have
| to say that it was a far superior teaching aid compared to any 2D
| map projection. For example, with a physical globe it's
| immediately apparent what's the deal with great circle routes.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| It's this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuthaGraph_projection
| rayiner wrote:
| > Given that the people who claim ownership and ensure
| distribution of this map have historically been white and rich
| representatives of the countries in the northern hemisphere
|
| This sounds like post hoc race baiting. The Mercator projection
| was devised in 1569, when Mediterranean countries like Spain,
| Portugal, and Italy were immensely powerful and pioneers in
| exploration. Many of the explorers who drew the first world maps
| came from those countries. If they cared about the relative size
| of the countries, why would they adopt a projection that makes
| Scandinavia look so much larger than Spain and Portugal and their
| holdings in Latin America?
|
| In an effort to find a race angle, the article overlooks
| important history. The Mercator projection was adopted because it
| preserved bearing lines for marine navigation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps. World maps were
| developed primarily by seafaring explorers, so this became the
| dominant projection, not just in Northern European countries, but
| pretty much everywhere.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _The Mercator projection was adopted because it preserved
| bearing lines for marine navigation_
|
| Specifically, Mercator preserves angles, making it possible to
| plot courses on the map using a protractor. Attempting this on
| a map with a non-conformal projection would be a nightmare.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Yes, though only a tiny percentage of people who use Mercator
| have ever plotted a course using a protractor.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| It's called path dependence; same reason that the Space
| Shuttle boosters' width is constrained by the width of two
| horses' rear ends put side by side.
| scoot wrote:
| I agree on your first point, but not your second. In the fourth
| paragraph it says:
|
| _" Its purpose was to be used for maritime navigation and it
| served this purpose well since throughout the projection North
| is up and South is down, while local shapes and directions are
| maintained. So when using this projection on a map scaled for
| navigational use it's easier to find your way."_
|
| The "solution" presented in the article looks an absolute mess
| to me though. Surely the better answer is a globe (real or
| virtual)? Those have existed in schools and homes for almost as
| long as maps. My children grew up with a LeapFrog globe, and at
| a young age gould find every country on the planet, by country
| or capital name. Great fun and highly recommended.
| rayiner wrote:
| The article notes the fact that Mercator is better for ocean
| navigation, but fails to understand how that's connected to
| its prevalence: the mapmakers were seafaring explorers.
|
| Classrooms have globes. Insofar as the Mercator projection is
| widespread, however, a responsible teacher should explain the
| historical connection between ocean navigation and mapmaking.
| Not recount a totally manufactured example of racism.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Classrooms have globes.
|
| Do they? Not many IME, and not really used.
|
| > a responsible teacher should explain the historical
| connection between ocean navigation and mapmaking
|
| Says who? Is that in the cirriculum?
|
| > a totally manufactured example of racism.
|
| That it's totally totally manufactured is itself totally
| manufactured.
| rootsudo wrote:
| They used too, my classes did. I can see not anymore with
| cost cutting and relying on Google Maps.
|
| But, there was a time where Google didn't exist, and a
| globe would be in the corner of the classroom w/ Maps
| that can be pulled down on the whiteboard/chalkboard (boy
| was that an exciting change!) that showed different maps,
| from Mercator maps to political USA maps and geographic
| USA maps.
|
| Shocking, I know.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Globes of size useful for navigation are too big to be
| convenient when actually navigating. You cannot flat pack
| globes. They're just impractical for this purpose.
| scoot wrote:
| You're conflating two different topics. The article asserts
| (correctly) that the Mercator projection, while useful for
| navigation, distorts the globe at a macro scale when used
| for educational purposes. A globe solves that problem.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's hard to look at a whole globe at once. It's also
| hard to have enough globes to see how political
| boundaries have changed over time. Flat projections are
| needed for educational purposes too.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Ah, yes, sorry, I got confused by this thread. Yes,
| globes are great educational tool. I think it's actually
| valuable to show all of globes, Mercator, and the weird
| equal area projections, just to teach about trade offs.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >A globe solves that problem.
|
| Great. Now try and draw a journey on a globe.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| With loaded issues like racism, more baseless claims just make
| the problem worse. What we need is evidence, and unfortunately
| there is almost none in this HN discussion. I've learned
| nothing about the issue.
|
| More broadly, systems can be discriminatory: Using the maps as
| an example, imagine if a projection made the US look tiny; I
| don't imagine it would sell well. But if one makes Africa
| appear tiny, the map may persist for a long time. That's how
| systems can be discriminatory and how we can decieve ourselves,
| without conscious intent. Also, there are plenty of people,
| especially in the past and also in the last few years, who have
| openly and aggressively expressed intent to discriminate based
| on race and similar factors, and we can add to that the more
| subtle expressions. We have plenty of evidence of widespread
| motive and we should expect many outcomes to match their stated
| intent.
|
| Many people in minority groups have told me, for years, that a
| large number of people in the US will _always_ deny racism, in
| every instance. They might say something acknowledging racism
| generally, but in _every_ specific instance they actively
| reject it has happened and oppose any action. An argument can
| always be found (for anything, of course). It 's politicized -
| it's not related to the facts or reason, every claim becomes a
| political battle that must be won. I didn't believe it at
| first, but it certainly has been born out, from my perspective.
| It's a situation that obstructs knowledge, bringing people
| together, and solutions, and not entirely incidentally:
| Politicizing any issue is an obvious way to make it similarly
| intractable (e.g., climate change). EDIT: Maybe it's like any
| innovation, such as in tech - people react with outrage to any
| change, as we know well on HN.
|
| Which brings us back to facts: People can come up with a
| plausible argument for anything; hard facts are the scythe that
| cuts away the 99.9% that is nonsense; that's why science and
| courtrooms rely on them.
| notahacker wrote:
| The idea that retaining a map which distorting the sizes of
| countries is a Eurocentric conspiracy against equatorial
| countries was originally made by Peters when pushing his equal
| area projection in the 1970s and 80s
|
| It's a pretty tendentious argument though, since in addition to
| it obviously not being the original intent, people _don 't_
| draw the conclusion that Greenland is a mighty state, the US is
| subordinate to Canada and the Middle East is a small and
| inconsequential backwater from map projections, and if people
| did gauge power and wealth from map projections, the Mercator
| projection would actually _understate_ the actual relative
| power and influence of Western Europe anyway (and Peters
| massively overstates arid underpopulated regions and is barely
| any better at putting India 's sixth of the world population in
| context).
|
| Plus of course, the Mercator projection is _still_ better for
| local navigation anyway.
| [deleted]
| noasaservice wrote:
| For any 2d representation of a sphere, you must give up at least
| 1 accurate dimension. Sometimes more.
|
| So that means no matter what 2d map used, will have a geo-
| mathematic shortcoming.
| feldrim wrote:
| Every once in a while, I see some posts based on maps and
| projections. And I cannot get it when adults still discuss these
| stuff. I had my first atlas when I was a 4th grader and the
| projections were depicted in detail in the first 15-20 pages. It
| is easy and foundational that I assumed everybody was aware of
| this information. Instead people rediscovered the Earth on each
| blog post mentioning the exact same thing. Amazing.
| dividefuel wrote:
| The article seems to imply that people are primarily exposed to
| Mercator in school without discussing its shortcomings. However
| in my experience growing up in the 90s/00s, we discussed lots of
| different projections and their respective tradeoffs. It was
| drilled in pretty deep that the Mercator reflected shapes
| accurately, but not relative sizes. I also remember seeing
| Robinson projection far more than Mercator, though again we were
| reminded that it's not perfect either, and that any 2D projection
| will have its pros/cons.
| Tagbert wrote:
| I was in public education in the US in the 60's and we often
| had lessons on different map projections when studying
| geography.
| rob_c wrote:
| Trust me, in bad public education in the UK the map is simply
| presented. You cover the concept of how to draw the map but if
| the teacher used the word "protection" it causes eyes to gloss
| over...
|
| Sounds like you had a good education my lucky friend and I hope
| it serves you well. I think the closest I saw was historical
| map putting Britain at the center of a big red empire before
| skipping several hundred years to cover Vietnam because the
| syllabus said we had to.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| But didn't you guys have globes back then? It was the main
| object in our geography classroom.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| German here - It's my understanding that in the US, classes
| rotate through rooms assigned to subjects (e.g. you go to
| your next class to the geography room). In Germany,
| subjects rotate through classes (e.g. 9th grade would have
| an assigned room, and the geography teacher would show up
| for the next lesson).
|
| So personally, I don't think I ever saw a geography teacher
| carry around a globe, nor talk about projections. I feel
| like I learned about it reading XKCD 10 years later.
| thayne wrote:
| Elementary school (usually up through 5th grade) in the
| US usually has one classroom and one teacher for most
| subjects. All of my elementary school classrooms had at
| least one globe.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _It 's my understanding that in the US, classes rotate
| through rooms assigned to subjects (e.g. you go to your
| next class to the geography room)._
|
| This is true after 4th grade, but 1st through 4th
| _usually_ have kids learning every regular subject from a
| single teacher in a single classroom. Of course there are
| many states and even more school districts, and it 's
| very possible that some of them do it differently.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| Austrian here. We too have a single teacher from first to
| forth class, with the exception of religion and sometimes
| PE.
|
| But I don't think that's the age to learn about map
| projections. My oldest child just finished first grade
| though, so I'll keep an eye open.
| bombcar wrote:
| Grade school didn't rotate for me, high school the kids
| moved classes.
|
| Somewhere in there we learned about projections (many
| were the "split globe" ones).
| gsich wrote:
| Also globes exist, which make those differences visible
| immediately.
| dharmab wrote:
| We used Google Earth in geography lessons in the 2000 which
| shows nearly true scale
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah this is some old baby boomer trope about how bad the
| Mercator projection is, but it's been decades since I saw this
| hung up in classroom. Globes are a thing and the internet makes
| much of this discussion moot.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _it 's been decades since I saw this hung up in classroom_
|
| Try to buy a world map for a classroom. Search things like
| "world map for classroom", "large world map", "world map
| poster" in Amazon. Probably 95% of the maps returned for
| these search terms are Mercator, but there are a few that
| aren't. American elementary school teachers are generalists,
| they teach geography without having specialized knowledge of
| geography, much less map projections. If such a teacher is
| buying a world map for their classroom, they're very likely
| to pick a Mercator map simply because that's what most
| classroom sized maps use.
|
| (Despite this, American children are not raised to think that
| Canada is powerful...)
| [deleted]
| rob_c wrote:
| Until the "joke" of the flat earth got way out of hand and
| you realise that the internet is great at everything aside
| from context and this is something that isn't taught.
| Although I remember a professor screwing with us and changing
| a proof on Wikipedia to catch people out one term...
| epgui wrote:
| That's a shameful act of vandalism on the part of the
| professor... :(
| epgui wrote:
| I went to public school in Canada (NB) in the 1990s and 2000s
| and we also covered the topic quite well. Not only that, but we
| also had ready access to spinning globes we could look at and
| compare to projections.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I don't remember being told about map projections at school.
| casefields wrote:
| Same here. I do remember the famous scene from West Wing
| which lead me to research the topic. Scene here:
| https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI
| triyambakam wrote:
| As another piece of data, I grew up in New York and had never
| heard about the Mercator projection until an adult.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| You still grew up seeing it constantly, even if you didn't
| know what it was.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Growing up in Poland, I don't think we encountered Mercator
| until much later when actually learning about various map
| projections. I think Mollweide projection is more widespread
| here for full Earth maps, and it reduces the stretching near
| poles effect.
| bipson wrote:
| Can confirm, I'm pretty sure I was exposed to almost
| exclusively Mollweide maps as a teenager (Austria).
| mc32 wrote:
| The best projection is a globe. A nice medium sized globe
| that's portable is great for teaching relationships between
| land and water as well as geography.
| teddyh wrote:
| Yes, I would assume that Poland would prefer to avoid
| stretching near poles.
| arbirk wrote:
| + turn it upside down
| labrador wrote:
| Buckminster Fuller invented the Dymaxion map, which is pretty
| good and similar to this post
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map
|
| My brain wasn't rebooted by a map until I saw an "upside down"
| map with the North pole and South pole vertically flipped. People
| from the Southern hemisphere seem to think it puts them in a
| better perspective
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-up_map_orientation
| [deleted]
| Tagbert wrote:
| I remember our 4th grade class (US 1960's) doing a project
| where we too a printout of that Dymaxion map and constructed a
| "globe" with it. It was part of a series of geography lessons
| on different map projections. I guess my brain rebooted a lot
| then.
| undersuit wrote:
| I've wanted to get a mercator map with a 90 degree rotation
| instead. An "equator-up" orientation?
| [deleted]
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I wonder if the Dymaxion map bits can be rearranged to create a
| more familiar map shape with the distortions mostly getting
| confined to oceans and unpopulated areas?
| Rediscover wrote:
| Yes, that was one of the concepts of it. The two most used
| arrangements are one interconnected body of water at the
| center, and the other one land mass at the center.
|
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dymaxion_map_ocean.
| ..
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map#/media/File%3AD.
| ..
| yboris wrote:
| Must watch: _Why are we changing maps?_ from The West Wing
|
| https://youtu.be/eLqC3FNNOaI?t=44
| devnull255 wrote:
| I really loved this episode. Especially when someone pointed
| out the fallacy of believing north = up and south = down, which
| is that way only because we live in a world where most map
| projections on a wall show north as up and south as down. It
| doesn't look like that at all from outer space.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| North being up hasn't always been the case; for quite some
| time, east was commonly up and west down; it's where the
| "orient" in "orientation" comes from.
|
| Which side is up really depends on how you imagine the earth
| going around the sun. If you look at the earth from its side
| as it revolves around the sun and you choose to depict the
| earth moving counter clockwise, the north is up. If you
| consider the earth revolving around the sun clockwise, south
| is up. The earth is at an angle, of course, but that angle
| isn't enough to really change the definitions of up and down.
|
| North being up makes logical sense when you consider that
| around 87% of humanity lives in the northern hemisphere. We
| generally read top to bottom and the populated parts of the
| earth are often what we're really interested in.
|
| There's also the choice of "north" that matters. There are
| many definitions for what constitutes as the north since the
| magnetic poles don't stay in a single place on the surface
| and the top/bottom of the spinning planet isn't anywhere near
| the magnetic poles. Then there's the north star moving as we
| move through the galaxy, making any north determined by
| celestial navigation questionable over time; currently
| Polaris is commonly used as the pole star, but on humanity's
| time scale that's a relatively recent (+-1300 years)
| development.
| andix wrote:
| When I was a kid, globes were still a thing. The represent the
| world very exactly.
|
| And for the digital kids nowadays, there are apps which show a 3d
| globe. Google Maps can do that too.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I still have my globe on my desk :) No better physical tool to
| really represent the earth. I love that google maps added the
| globe view, this is much better than just showing a mercator
| map. Also always loved xplanet.
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/iss/index_portal.php
|
| If Mercator is good enough for NASA, it's good enough for me
| ipnon wrote:
| Can the stickiness of the Mercator projection in the West be
| attributed to the fact that most of the West is in the regions of
| the projection that are most distorted, which allows Westerners
| to examine their own geography in more detail? A projection that
| made America and Europe comparatively hard to read would seem to
| have little staying power on school walls there.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I believe this is what people actually mean when they talk
| about this.
|
| Most of the other replies seem to be massively overreacting to
| a percieved overeaction, as if the message was "Gerardus
| Mercator was a Nazi!".
|
| People distort maps all the time, often for good reasons.
| People notice when maps distort something they care about (like
| maps without New Zealand to people in New Zealand, or the BBC
| weather map enlarging London at the expense of the North of
| England and Scotland).
|
| It's similar to early cameras not reproducing dark skin tones
| well until chocolate manufacturers complained about the way it
| made their product look, or the recent drama about automatic
| image cropping preferring the lighter skinned person in the
| photo.
|
| No, the camera/computer is not a racist. No, the programmer is
| not a racist. But, it still reflects a society where a large
| fraction of the human beings on earth aren't given as much
| consideration as others. And that's racist.
| labster wrote:
| No. The stickiness of the Mercator projection is due to
| navigational charts wanting to preserve true bearings.
| JackFr wrote:
| And while a globe is obviously better, the orthogonal
| representation of North-South and East-West also allow for
| some easier instruction of some earth science topics -
| basically that the Earth rotates along the horizontal axis.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| One can't roll up a globe and put it away.
| bl0rg wrote:
| Unless you live in four dimensions, of course. Not that I
| do, I'm definitely a creature of three, and only three,
| spatial dimensions.
| mrweasel wrote:
| When ever I feel the need to know the "actual" size of a country,
| I turn to https://www.thetruesize.com which allows you to move
| countries around to better compare them. For instance, I have a
| pretty good idea of how big Sweden is, so moving Sweden around
| helps me visualize the size of something like Japan.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| This reminds of the dumb conspiracy stuff I used to see in my
| Facebook feed. Any 2D projection of a 3D surface is going to be
| distorted - there's no way around it. If you want to see an
| accurate representation of the Earth, look at a globe.
| antiquark wrote:
| Critical Map Theory.
| swayvil wrote:
| Clickbait much? It's a realistic portrayal of scales in
| geography, not psilocybin mushrooms
| belinder wrote:
| I'm a big fan of maps and have seen a lot of different
| projections but this is my first time seeing authagraph. I think
| not only does it do a good job of showing relative size, it also
| looks good - but I'm used to looking at 'unconventional'
| projections. The only issue with it is that it's a bit hard to
| gauge what is 'up' and what is 'down'. If you were showing me
| this projection for Mars then I would probably get lost.
|
| I'm having trouble finding a nice large resolution image. Anyone
| found one?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I never understood the obsession with Mercator projection in blog
| posts and the media. Is the US school system actually using world
| maps with Mercator projection, or what else is the reason that
| this topic is popping up again and again? The world maps I had
| been 'exposed to' during school (in the 80s!) used a projection
| which narrows towards the poles and looks a lot more 'realistic':
|
| Basically like this:
|
| https://www.mapsofindia.com/world-map/world-political-map-20...
|
| ...still a lot of distortion of course, but much better than
| traditional Mercator (which is 500 years old, so give the guy
| some slack).
| guskel wrote:
| It's just another example of modern virtue signaling. YT male
| evil. Got it. We know.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I never understood the obsession with Mercator projection in
| blog posts and the media.
|
| It's because American universities and media in recent years
| strongly incentivize finding racial angles to every story or
| topic. "How we draw maps is racist" is low hanging fruit.
| Growing up in racist Virginia in the 1990s, we had globes and
| the flat wall maps--which still showed the Soviet Union--used
| an oval projection:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortelius_oval_projection
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| Growing up in American schools, I saw this as well. I remember
| even asking the teacher why the map had multiple cutaways, and
| her explaining the distortion. I could be convinced that
| Mercator prevalence is a thing, if someone dug into map sales.
| campbel wrote:
| Yep, this looks super familiar to me. We also just had globes
| in our classrooms. Today's students probably use Google maps
| (or equivalent) which wouldn't have this problem anyways.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Have you ever zoomed all the way out on Google map
| tephra wrote:
| I would have thought national geographic maps are common in U.S
| classrooms? And I don't think they've ever used the Mercator.
| teddyh wrote:
| I think nobody needs a word map projected to a plane anymore.
| Local maps do not suffer noticably from distortion, and a world
| map can be represented as an interactive globe.
| chmod600 wrote:
| This will all be resolved when smartphones have holographic
| screens, and just present the actual curvature at whatever zoom
| level you are at.
| pessimizer wrote:
| For me, it only breaks Brazil, Europe and India. Brazil starts to
| seem _underpopulated_ for its size, and Europe and India look
| very small.
| steanne wrote:
| there's also a nice subset of maps that have south at the top.
|
| http://gisweb.massey.ac.nz/topic/webreferencesites/TheUpside...
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I understand the intention here but really, do people not see
| globes any more? All projections suffer from issues of some sort,
| and the globe is by far the best way to understand that. We were
| taught about this in grade school.
|
| Even on a computer display, you can use Google Earth to replicate
| the effect.
| bambam24 wrote:
| devnull255 wrote:
| The Mercator projection map was the map I was most exposed to in
| school and was on my bedroom wall at home when I was going to
| Elementary school. Later on when I went to college, I saw the
| Peters Projection map (and had that on the wall above my desk in
| my apartment. This map rebooted my brain in that it showed a more
| truthful representation of how large an area was in relation to
| other areas.
|
| I do happen to think that the prevalence and persistence of the
| Mercator projection's use with its grossly distorted
| representations of northern hemisphere land regions encouraged
| distorted thinking about geopolitics. That the since the northern
| continents and their countries appear larger than southern
| countries, this also encouraged the mistaken belief that the
| north was more important than the south.
| ddhhyy wrote:
| Two of my favorite sources for thinking about map projections
| come from (where else?) the USGS:
|
| Map Projections: https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/70047422/report.pdf
|
| and the more comprehensive Map Projections: A Working Manual:
| https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1395
| Tomte wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/977/
|
| Peirce quincuncial looks cool.
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Another "Europeana are racist ergo Mercator".
|
| The Mercator projection is popular for one very important reason:
| ease of navigation [1]. If you know nothing but your location on
| Earth you can sail, walk, fly, paddle wherever you want with a
| Mercator map and a compass.
|
| Thats it.
|
| Before fancy navigation aids this was huge. Sure, trade winds and
| great circles were important consideration. But, at the end of
| the day, if poop hit the fan (think Shackleton expedition) and
| all you had was a row boat, a compass and a sextant with 800 mi
| of South Atlantic to cross, you could still make it home.
|
| But no, the purpose of a chart is not as a practical aid to
| getting around. The purpose of a chart is for insecure white men
| to feel better about themselves. Here I agree, as the author is
| clearly projecting his white savior complex
|
| [1] the author doesn't even get right the reason why the Mercator
| excels for navigation: constant rhumb lines. You set your course
| and you'll get to your destination without needing to correct (a
| great circle requires constant correction). "Small features are
| preserved" what croc!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Perhaps we could approach the issue with intellectual
| curiosity, as HN asks us, instead of dismissing it (complete
| with a psychoanalysis of the author).
| dgfitz wrote:
| > The purpose of a chart is for insecure white men to feel
| better about themselves.
|
| I'd like to see the Venn diagram of insecure white men and
| insecure white men who feel better about themselves because of
| the Mercator project.
|
| What a strange flex.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Here I agree, as the author is clearly projecting his white
| savior complex
|
| I'm convinced this "we are good white people, not like those
| are bad white people" stuff has a more sinister purpose:
| control. You think they are going to engage in this large scale
| endeavor of rewriting historical narratives and not use the
| opportunity to get more power for themselves?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Isn't that a bit paranoid? Do you have evidence for it? Such
| attacks are a great - and common - way of changing the topic
| from the merits of the issue.
| rayiner wrote:
| I mean, the white people who colonized everyone often do
| themselves as benefactors. I don't think it's paranoid to
| ask what contemporary benefactors are getting out of it for
| themselves.
|
| I think there is evidence to justify skepticism. I'm from
| Bangladesh and my dad has a lot of beefs with the British,
| but I can't say Mercator projection has ever come up as one
| of them. I heard it for the first time from white people.
| Who came up with the idea that the Mercator projection is
| racist? Who popularized it? Who gains power if minority
| kids learn that in schools and come to believe it's true?
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| THe whole argument about the negative affects of widespread use
| of Mercator projection for world maps has always struck me as way
| overblown. It's true, to be sure, that most Americans (which I
| use as an example. because I know them), have a distorted notion
| of the size of Africa, and to a lesser extent, South America, but
| in my experience, they equally underestimate the size of Russian
| and China. I think it has more to do with their certainty that
| the US is "really big and important" as countries go, than with
| mental burn-in of a warped geography from grade-school maps.
| verisimi wrote:
| I like the map, and article. It does challenge you to look at the
| world differently and realise how little you actually know.
|
| > The longer we use a tool without questioning it, the more of a
| truth it becomes no matter how wrong it is.
|
| Comments like this do irk me though. Truth is not subjective, you
| cannot have more or less of it, and whether you use a tool has
| nothing to do with the underlying reality. Using a tool, in this
| case a map of the terrain, does not make it more or less
| truthful. A map can be more accurate, a better representation, a
| genuine attempt, but it cannot contain more truth. The truth is
| the terrain itself.
| causality0 wrote:
| The authagraph seems like a pretty garbage projection compared
| with something like the dymaxion.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I thought Mercator was instituted and maintained by the mighty
| Antarctica. Look how much bigger and better it is than every
| other landmass!
| thayne wrote:
| > We are not taught to question it, even by our teachers
|
| Was I just unusually lucky? In grade school my teacher spent
| several weeks teaching us about different map projections, and
| how there are pros and cons, and none are perfect because the
| earth is round but maps are flat. And we even talked about how
| having north at the top is rather arbitrary, and having south at
| the top would work just as well.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| We didn't learn about projections per-se, but more than one
| teacher brought a globe to class, just to show how arctic and
| antarctic areas are spread out on 2d maps, and to show the
| distorsion when trying to draw stuff on a sphere onto a 2d
| paper.
| bombcar wrote:
| Ours went into detail about how even a globe is inaccurate
| because the oblate spheroid.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| The entire purpose of the article is race baiting against so-
| called "insecure white men", so substantiated claims aren't
| needed.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Having grown up with a world map over my bed, I'd say the overall
| benefit from seeing all those political borders was generally
| low. I stared at Antarctica a lot and was able to name most
| African countries; without further context however their names
| remained rather abstract.
|
| More interesting concepts would be to emphasize population
| density, or other meaningful cultural and economic measurables
| that, short of a "brain reboot", would increase understanding of
| the world.
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/3d-mapping-the-worlds-large...
| hypertexthero wrote:
| See also the Waterman butterfly projection:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterman_butterfly_projection
| Yizahi wrote:
| Here is another thought that may reboot OPs brain - not all
| schools in the world use Mercator projection for teaching. In my
| country we have used Robinson's projections if I remember
| correctly. Also students usually have no need for navigation
| precise projections, instead they need something that can be
| reasonably used for all countries of the globe and for the globe
| itself.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Is it just me or does it seem like this is a problem that is
| disappearing with the prevalence of computers? I mean, the only
| time I can remember seeing a Mercator projection is in yet
| another HN "here is how bad Mercator is" articles.
| joshe wrote:
| Equal earth (https://equal-earth.com/) is a good well designed
| map. I printed the pacific ocean centered version and have it on
| my wall.
|
| There is a lot of conspiratorial woo about this topic, but it is
| genuinely useful to get a sizes right at a starting point for
| thinking clearly about the world.
|
| For example (orthogonal to the usual conspiracy talk), it's
| commonly thought that Russia is super important and unbelievably
| vast. But a good equal area map shows it's only a 1/3 bigger than
| Canada + Alaska (and considerably poorer).
|
| Likewise we are much more likely to travel at the world scale by
| plane with great circle routes. The mercator map is actually a
| less accurate guide to that type of navigation.
|
| That said it is still useful to have north be directly up and
| south, east and west be straight lines too. Hence google maps
| using an mercator-ish projection, to make the zoom from local
| navigation to the world size continue to preserve straight lines
| and angles. Mercator is overused but is useful.
| JasonCEC wrote:
| Shades of Snowcrash in the title, needed to read the comments to
| make sure it was safe before clicking.
| soared wrote:
| It has always seemed more valid me to distort water rather than
| land.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Probably makes sense these days but back in the 1500s when they
| were doing all the sailing, distorting the water might well
| have caused problems of a terminal nature, I think.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| looking at a globe, the size of the "Pacific Ocean" is what
| changes my brain
| michalc wrote:
| I've posted this on HN before, but my own "brain reboot" came
| from making
|
| http://projections.charemza.name/
|
| that allows you to rotate the world before applying the Mercator
| projection. The "crazy looking" distortions make me realise just
| how distorted the usual projection itself is
| wodenokoto wrote:
| It would be nice if there was a globe, with the center of the
| projection facing the user. Once you start rotating the map, it
| is really difficult to make sense of what is going on.
|
| Other than that, it is really cool, and quite trippy to play
| with.
| michalc wrote:
| Ah for me the lack of sense of what's going on is sort of the
| point of it. The rotated projections are just as right as the
| regular Mercator projection in an objective way, but it
| really doesn't feel that way.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Mercator projection in an objective way
|
| Only if you drop the objective reason (navigation) that the
| Mercator projection was made.
| zwkrt wrote:
| That was exactly what I thought too. I kept trying to make
| the map seem "normal" but no matter when I tried some thing
| was always blown so far out of perspective it was
| unrecognizable. Every projection is so far off that it just
| becomes comical. At that point it clicked that the Mercator
| projection is just as bad, I've just seen it before.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| https://ibb.co/BVfgYj2
|
| This is the best I could do, and it's pretty much just
| putting the vast empty expanses of the Pacific and
| Atlantic oceans in the higher-distortion areas near the
| top and bottom.
| ptato wrote:
| it's a very neat map
| JackFr wrote:
| > Every projection is so far off that it just becomes
| comical.
|
| Except Lambert and Albers.
|
| They become conical.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That's very cool. I don't know if it is quite fair to the
| Mercator projection though because it mostly distorts the north
| and south poles which are conveniently not very populated.
|
| You should add other projections for comparison!
| micheljansen wrote:
| Very smooth, well done!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Also, for an article that claims to change the world and reboot
| your brain, it should probably pick a topic that was covered in
| 2001 by The West Wing (which proposed a better alternative
| projection).
| smiddereens wrote:
| yummypaint wrote:
| Given that almost all maps are now viewed on electronic devices,
| why bother using any projection? We can now show the entire earth
| with no distortion by letting users rotate a virtual globe.
| Zooming in and out has already solved the core problem of globes
| being bulky and undetailed relative to maps. I would argue that
| for laypeople use of projections is still largely a historical
| artifact that we haven't aged out of yet. There are only a
| relative handful of people who might actually navigate using the
| old ways, but in practice thats's just a failsafe for computer
| assisted planning which considers the true shape of the earth
| already.
| fabrika wrote:
| What if you want to see Australia and Greenland at the same
| time? Globes have their limitations.
| jameshart wrote:
| As long as the screen you're viewing it on is flat you're going
| to need some kind of projection. If it's a perspective or
| orthographic view of a centered sphere it will be some sort of
| polar projection.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| You cannot visualize a router between two countries on the
| opposite sides, without manually rotating the 3d globe
| (projected on a 2d screen).
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