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> I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! Hmm. That’s not usually how

> I'm constantly amazed at how hung up people are on apparent size of countries. If size is your thing, use some other projection! Hmm. That’s not usually how the discourse goes. It’s never “wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y. That’s terrible.” It usually goes something like “wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y. This distorts our worldview and makes us think things we shouldn’t have thought. That’s terrible.” FWIW, I was amazed in school when I saw a more accurate projection of the size of Europe. I mean, I _knew_ that it was tiny. But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after seeing the other projection. Similarly but not size-related, I was amazed to learn that some countries place Asia in the center (and the social/cultural implications of this). I think you should be more amazed at people who _don’t_ care at _all _ about size. Sure, this group might include reasonable people like yourself who are knowledgeable about map distortions and trade offs. But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group. (Map size “memes” appear on Quora often and the degenerates come out of the woodworks to complain.)

trhfhxggf 3y ago
> It usually goes something like “wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y. This distorts our worldview and makes us think things we shouldn’t have thought. That’s terrible.” That's not less stupid than the other statement. It's like looking at your shadow at sunset and thinking, "Wow, I never realized I was 20 feet tall."
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  > It's like looking at your shadow at sunset and thinking, "Wow, I never realized I was 20 feet tall." Quite the opposite, no? It's like spending your whole life looking at only your evening shadow (Hello, Plato) and then seeing yourself in a good mirror and realising your actual height relative to the world around you for the first time.
  - bluepod4 3y ago
    Exactly.
prepend 3y ago
> But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after seeing the other projection. That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important? Did you ever check out how small Britain or Spain or Portugal or Netherlands were to the size of their empire. Do you now think that Indonesia is more important because of its size? I would expect that revelations about population would be more worldview adjusting (Nigeria and Indonesia are so huge).
- bluepod4 3y ago
  You have a fixed and narrow definition of what important means. Importance should change depending on context. Sure, you are definitely allowed to say that a certain metric (i.e. population size or density) has more practical applications and provides better signal for “blah blah”. But I’m not discussing “blah blah”.
  - prepend 3y ago
    I’m curious why you think my definition of important is fixed and narrow. I didn’t define it and I agree that importance is a factor of context. I commented that it was curious that someone would think size is so important that learning the true size of countries would change their world view. In that land mass isn’t usually very important for political or cultural significance (eg, Canada is huge and that doesn’t make it important, Russia is important not because of its size, etc etc).
    - bluepod4 3y ago
      Because you used phrases like “really important” and “more important”. It sounds very juvenile.
- IIAOPSW 3y ago
  >That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important? If it wasn't, why was so much of history spent fighting over it?
  - 3y ago
lm28469 3y ago
> But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after seeing the other projection. Can you elaborate on that ? Did you think bigger = better ?
brightlancer 3y ago
> I think you should be more amazed at people who _don’t_ care at _all _ about size. Sure, this group might include reasonable people like yourself who are knowledgeable about map distortions and trade offs. But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group. On what are you basing it? IME, almost nobody cares. Even folks who like maps (e.g. me) "don't care" in most cases, because flat maps will have distortions. AFAICT, the people who really care about these distortions are folks who have political agendas and like to sling ad hominems around, such as "Folks who don't care are morons or racists." So again: > But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group. On what are you basing that?
- bluepod4 3y ago
  I was basing it off of “IME” and “AFAICT” similar to what you just did in your own ad hominem attack ironically. I don’t tend to preface things like that when commenting and usually I assume this when reading comments online. I used to write “anecdotally” but it’s 2023. https://itsoktobewhite.quora.com/ https://itsoktobewhite.quora.com/ On Quora, there’s a “group” sort of like a subreddit titled “It’s OK to be White”. There’s about 35k people who follow it. Their mission is to “uplift White cultures and oppose anti-White racism”. Like I already said in my previous comment (so you didn’t need to ask twice what I was basing it off of), people often post map distortion memes on Quora and these other people from that group come out of the woodworks to complain. These memes aren’t even posted in that group. And I wish I could say that it’s just these weirdos on Quora that act like this. But no. I’ve seen it on Instagram. On Facebook. I’ve heard it in real life. It’s a thing that bothers a certain demographic of people. While it’s not a “major” thing and shouldn’t matter, it’s still a thing that I tend to see often. I see there’s miscommunication here though. I do agree with you that most people “don’t care”. That’s the phrase we have been using. What you are saying and what I also believe is that most people are “map agnostic” for lack of a better phrase. They don’t care in that sense. Like life is too short. It’s just a map. But when I used the phrase “don’t care” and added underscores around it and the words “at all” in my comments yesterday, I was referring to people who have _strong_ and _negative_ opinions about not caring. For example, OP said that he was _constantly amazed_. And the other language he used evoked that he was “flabbergasted” that people care about map distortions. (Do you see how this is a different definition of “don’t care”?) The language he was using and the emotions involved “mirrored” the language and emotions that I see on Quora and hear in real life from that specific group of people. You’re right. I don’t have any concrete data or surveys or experiments or a sentiment analysis to show that those groups overlap. I was just basing it off of being alive for 30+ years, living in different countries, having a brain, etc. (Also, there’s nothing wrong with calling someone a moron and/or a racist lol. The two groups usually overlap. Oops I did it again!)

trhfhxggf 3y ago

> It usually goes something like “wow, Country X is actually smaller than Country Y. This distorts our worldview and makes us think things we shouldn’t have thought. That’s terrible.” That's not less stupid than the other statement. It's like looking at your shadow at sunset and thinking, "Wow, I never realized I was 20 feet tall."

AlecSchueler 3y ago
> It's like looking at your shadow at sunset and thinking, "Wow, I never realized I was 20 feet tall." Quite the opposite, no? It's like spending your whole life looking at only your evening shadow (Hello, Plato) and then seeing yourself in a good mirror and realising your actual height relative to the world around you for the first time.
- bluepod4 3y ago
  Exactly.

prepend 3y ago

> But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after seeing the other projection. That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important? Did you ever check out how small Britain or Spain or Portugal or Netherlands were to the size of their empire. Do you now think that Indonesia is more important because of its size? I would expect that revelations about population would be more worldview adjusting (Nigeria and Indonesia are so huge).

bluepod4 3y ago
You have a fixed and narrow definition of what important means. Importance should change depending on context. Sure, you are definitely allowed to say that a certain metric (i.e. population size or density) has more practical applications and provides better signal for “blah blah”. But I’m not discussing “blah blah”.
- prepend 3y ago
  I’m curious why you think my definition of important is fixed and narrow. I didn’t define it and I agree that importance is a factor of context. I commented that it was curious that someone would think size is so important that learning the true size of countries would change their world view. In that land mass isn’t usually very important for political or cultural significance (eg, Canada is huge and that doesn’t make it important, Russia is important not because of its size, etc etc).
  - bluepod4 3y ago
    Because you used phrases like “really important” and “more important”. It sounds very juvenile.
IIAOPSW 3y ago
>That’s odd. Did you think land mass was somehow really important? If it wasn't, why was so much of history spent fighting over it?
- 3y ago

lm28469 3y ago

> But my thoughts about Europe definitely changed after seeing the other projection. Can you elaborate on that ? Did you think bigger = better ?

brightlancer 3y ago

> I think you should be more amazed at people who _don’t_ care at _all _ about size. Sure, this group might include reasonable people like yourself who are knowledgeable about map distortions and trade offs. But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group. On what are you basing it? IME, almost nobody cares. Even folks who like maps (e.g. me) "don't care" in most cases, because flat maps will have distortions. AFAICT, the people who really care about these distortions are folks who have political agendas and like to sling ad hominems around, such as "Folks who don't care are morons or racists." So again: > But a lot of the “I don’t care” group overlaps with the “Africa is a country” group. On what are you basing that?

bluepod4 3y ago
I was basing it off of “IME” and “AFAICT” similar to what you just did in your own ad hominem attack ironically. I don’t tend to preface things like that when commenting and usually I assume this when reading comments online. I used to write “anecdotally” but it’s 2023. https://itsoktobewhite.quora.com/ https://itsoktobewhite.quora.com/ On Quora, there’s a “group” sort of like a subreddit titled “It’s OK to be White”. There’s about 35k people who follow it. Their mission is to “uplift White cultures and oppose anti-White racism”. Like I already said in my previous comment (so you didn’t need to ask twice what I was basing it off of), people often post map distortion memes on Quora and these other people from that group come out of the woodworks to complain. These memes aren’t even posted in that group. And I wish I could say that it’s just these weirdos on Quora that act like this. But no. I’ve seen it on Instagram. On Facebook. I’ve heard it in real life. It’s a thing that bothers a certain demographic of people. While it’s not a “major” thing and shouldn’t matter, it’s still a thing that I tend to see often. I see there’s miscommunication here though. I do agree with you that most people “don’t care”. That’s the phrase we have been using. What you are saying and what I also believe is that most people are “map agnostic” for lack of a better phrase. They don’t care in that sense. Like life is too short. It’s just a map. But when I used the phrase “don’t care” and added underscores around it and the words “at all” in my comments yesterday, I was referring to people who have _strong_ and _negative_ opinions about not caring. For example, OP said that he was _constantly amazed_. And the other language he used evoked that he was “flabbergasted” that people care about map distortions. (Do you see how this is a different definition of “don’t care”?) The language he was using and the emotions involved “mirrored” the language and emotions that I see on Quora and hear in real life from that specific group of people. You’re right. I don’t have any concrete data or surveys or experiments or a sentiment analysis to show that those groups overlap. I was just basing it off of being alive for 30+ years, living in different countries, having a brain, etc. (Also, there’s nothing wrong with calling someone a moron and/or a racist lol. The two groups usually overlap. Oops I did it again!)