4 ms·

I don’t seem to even get this effect, the map looks upside down not mind blowing. If I turn a mug over it’s not a mind blowing new thing, it’s an upside down mu

by j4coh 1y ago

I don’t seem to even get this effect, the map looks upside down not mind blowing. If I turn a mug over it’s not a mind blowing new thing, it’s an upside down mug.

vasco 1y ago
Also probably every single kid that ever played with a map has turn it around a million times, this is a very naive 2deep4u kinda post.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Same when people get their minds blown about the sizes of countries at different latitudes. Feels like I'm the only one who played with a globe as a kid...
isqueiros 1y ago
a mug cannot function when upside down and yet when you change the arbitrary orientation of a map it can still function the same you literally missed the point of the _title_ of the article, quite impressive
- j4coh 1y ago
  I can turn my hand over and it still functions. I can turn lots of things over that still function. I can even set something on top of my upside-down mug. This is not mind blowing to me, your mileage may vary. I also don't seem to have this association with "the bottom of things is bad" so maybe that's why it doesn't seem so shocking or clever to flip things over.
- dudeinjapan 1y ago
  ohhh… so thats why my coffee keeps spilling everywhere. I just thought my mug was defective. Hole faces upward: got it. These things really should come with an instruction manual.
- Levitz 1y ago
  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.
  - 542354234235 1y ago
    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 of the mug. It is not arbitrary.
    - j4coh 1y ago
      Okay, forget gravity. If you stand on your head and look at the mug, do you get lots of insights about a mug that you wouldn't have had standing upright? Does it look different, or is it just an upside-down mug? For me I would just get the upside-down mug. I suspect I don't have this thing the article mentions where I associate the bottoms of things with badness, so I don't get this effect where the bad bottom suddenly becomes the good top if I flip it or myself over. There's just no effect except perhaps getting dizzy.
    - Levitz 1y ago
      >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.
jcattle 1y ago
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 nothing in the physical world which prescribes north to be up.
- vladms 1y ago
  > An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map. Is it as useful and/or efficient though? I could write a phrase in English from right to left and if you really wanted you could read it, but it would be highly inefficient. An efficient society sometimes has to pick conventions (how to write text, how to print a map, what characters to use, etc) and I find not interesting to point that other conventions could have been used.
  - jcattle 1y ago
    I mean, to me at least it is also interesting. Like Japanese writing or Arabic. It's interesting because it is different, there's a different predominant convention. You can also think further about how the writing convention might have had an impact on culture and the society itself. Also thinking of maps and Japan: where I am from (Germany) public overview maps of parks or street maps usually have north as up. In Japan however it is very common for those maps to have up as the cardinal direction you are looking at the map at. So if you are looking at the map in a western direction, the map will have west up. So for walking the map is straight up, backwards down, left left and right right. Like that it is very easy to know which way to go. Want to go to some place that is on the left on the map? Turn left!
    - vladms 1y ago
      Yes, I think there are many interesting things to consider about maps (like projection, orientation maps fixed on a panel/wall, orientation for digital maps). All those discussion will also transmit the basic idea (there is no "good/bad" way) while also discussing other problems ("can't represent area well", "people like different options", "different cases require different orientation").
strken 1y ago
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 human figure because it discourages symbol drawing. With a map, I find it helps me realise how close certain points are to each other, how small politically significant regions are, which lattitude different climate bands sit at, and so on. A mug is a pretty boring object which we're all used to seeing upside down and which doesn't have many interesting features, so of course turning it upside down will not reveal anything interesting.
- sanderjd 1y ago
  This is all very interesting, but I'm sorry, personally I just feel the same as the poster you replied to. I don't experience this as anything weird, I just experience it as if I'm looking at a map from the top.
- j4coh 1y ago
  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, though that isn't really what the article talks about. Can you read upside-down or does it become a jumble of lines? I can read upside-down with no special effort so maybe this is canceling something out.
  - BrandoElFollito 1y ago
    I agree. In addition I can relate to elements (such as imagining the road from Paris to Munich), it just takes more processing.
  - 1718627440 1y ago

by j4coh 1y ago

I don’t seem to even get this effect, the map looks upside down not mind blowing. If I turn a mug over it’s not a mind blowing new thing, it’s an upside down mug.

vasco 1y ago

Also probably every single kid that ever played with a map has turn it around a million times, this is a very naive 2deep4u kinda post.

bonoboTP 1y ago
Same when people get their minds blown about the sizes of countries at different latitudes. Feels like I'm the only one who played with a globe as a kid...

isqueiros 1y ago

a mug cannot function when upside down and yet when you change the arbitrary orientation of a map it can still function the same you literally missed the point of the _title_ of the article, quite impressive

j4coh 1y ago
I can turn my hand over and it still functions. I can turn lots of things over that still function. I can even set something on top of my upside-down mug. This is not mind blowing to me, your mileage may vary. I also don't seem to have this association with "the bottom of things is bad" so maybe that's why it doesn't seem so shocking or clever to flip things over.
dudeinjapan 1y ago
ohhh… so thats why my coffee keeps spilling everywhere. I just thought my mug was defective. Hole faces upward: got it. These things really should come with an instruction manual.
Levitz 1y ago
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.
- 542354234235 1y ago
  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 of the mug. It is not arbitrary.
  - j4coh 1y ago
    Okay, forget gravity. If you stand on your head and look at the mug, do you get lots of insights about a mug that you wouldn't have had standing upright? Does it look different, or is it just an upside-down mug? For me I would just get the upside-down mug. I suspect I don't have this thing the article mentions where I associate the bottoms of things with badness, so I don't get this effect where the bad bottom suddenly becomes the good top if I flip it or myself over. There's just no effect except perhaps getting dizzy.
  - Levitz 1y ago
    >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.

jcattle 1y ago

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 nothing in the physical world which prescribes north to be up.

vladms 1y ago
> An "upside down" map is just as valid as a right side up map. Is it as useful and/or efficient though? I could write a phrase in English from right to left and if you really wanted you could read it, but it would be highly inefficient. An efficient society sometimes has to pick conventions (how to write text, how to print a map, what characters to use, etc) and I find not interesting to point that other conventions could have been used.
- jcattle 1y ago
  I mean, to me at least it is also interesting. Like Japanese writing or Arabic. It's interesting because it is different, there's a different predominant convention. You can also think further about how the writing convention might have had an impact on culture and the society itself. Also thinking of maps and Japan: where I am from (Germany) public overview maps of parks or street maps usually have north as up. In Japan however it is very common for those maps to have up as the cardinal direction you are looking at the map at. So if you are looking at the map in a western direction, the map will have west up. So for walking the map is straight up, backwards down, left left and right right. Like that it is very easy to know which way to go. Want to go to some place that is on the left on the map? Turn left!
  - vladms 1y ago
    Yes, I think there are many interesting things to consider about maps (like projection, orientation maps fixed on a panel/wall, orientation for digital maps). All those discussion will also transmit the basic idea (there is no "good/bad" way) while also discussing other problems ("can't represent area well", "people like different options", "different cases require different orientation").

strken 1y ago

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 human figure because it discourages symbol drawing. With a map, I find it helps me realise how close certain points are to each other, how small politically significant regions are, which lattitude different climate bands sit at, and so on. A mug is a pretty boring object which we're all used to seeing upside down and which doesn't have many interesting features, so of course turning it upside down will not reveal anything interesting.

sanderjd 1y ago
This is all very interesting, but I'm sorry, personally I just feel the same as the poster you replied to. I don't experience this as anything weird, I just experience it as if I'm looking at a map from the top.
j4coh 1y ago
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, though that isn't really what the article talks about. Can you read upside-down or does it become a jumble of lines? I can read upside-down with no special effort so maybe this is canceling something out.
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  I agree. In addition I can relate to elements (such as imagining the road from Paris to Munich), it just takes more processing.
- 1718627440 1y ago