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As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African
by xyzelement 22d ago
As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose.
It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant.
On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the margin, European children will look at the map and feel less significant.
It doesn't shock me that the US voted against it. I am surprised that others voted for it, and diminished themselves.
- politician 22d agoI'd love to hear from the folks that downvoted this carefully neutral observation.
- antonvs 22d agoBecause it’s focusing purely on how big continents “look” without even mentioning the issue of actual size. That is not, in any credible sense, “carefully neutral”.
- politician 19d agoThe entire point of the new projection was to reflect the relative size of the landmasses more accurately.
- jeroenhd 22d agoI don't think "European children will look at the map and feel less significant" is a carefully neutral observation. It's an assumption that European children feel superiority because their country is slightly bigger. If anything, I expect the accurate sizes set the stage for feeling superiority over their ancestors colonizing huge lands while coming from tiny countries. If we're talking about kids, they should just get taught this type of geography using a globe. You can get an accurate (enough) inflatable globe for like 3 euros, including shipping.
- politician 19d agoI think understand what you're trying to say, that the relative sizes of countries on the map is not of any particular importance, and that it certainly does not affect the pride one feels in one's country positively or negatively. Yet, it was clearly very important for the governments of the formerly smaller countries to be shown to be larger on the official UN map. Otherwise, why bother with a vote?
- riffraff 22d agoI think the ones who got diminished did it for both idealistic and PR reasons. I mean, if you're France or the UK, you want to keep good relationships with Africa, and probably do feel some minor guilt about colonialism. This is a vote that costs you little, so it's reasonable you'd side with it.
- akie 22d agoWhy would anyone object to reducing their inflated size to normal size if it means artificially shrunk continents can be seen at their true size?
- josephcsible 21d agoIf it were possible to correct the size distortions with no downside, support would be unanimous. The problem is that that's impossible, and correcting the size distortion requires introducing some other kind of worse distortion. Equal Earth in particular introduces very severe shape distortion anywhere not near the center of the map (e.g., look how skewed Alaska is).
- LittleShaman 22d agoIts an equal area projection which means it preserves relative area. Both kids in Europe and Africa will actually end up with a more correct idea of how large both their continents are.
- seszett 22d ago> European children will look at the map and feel less significant. They might instead feel even more more "important" for achieving so much with such a small territory. I know I was somewhat shocked as a kid when I learnt that France was that small country when I had always thought for some reason that it was Greenland (vaguely the same shape I guess, and big enough to feel like it was important. It was certainly not a Mercator projection by the way, Greenland was still a reasonable size on that map on the wall in the classroom). Instead France was just this small piece of land and it was still so important, and it felt a bit impressive. I think the thing is people will find a way to feel significant one way or another, and maps probably aren't the main means of doing so.
- inemesitaffia 22d agoMost of France is in South America
- seszett 22d agoThat's not true, about a third of France is in Antarctica if you want to count it, but French Guiana in South America is only a small part of France.
- graemep 22d agoWhy does the size of a county's territory matter so much? Russia is much bigger than the US or China, is it more important? Australia has about three quarters of the land area of the US, is it as significant?
- xyzelement 22d agoIf it doesn't matter why did Africa make such a push for this projection?
- graemep 22d agoSome people think it matters, mostly politicians and political activists. That does not mean its actually important.
- xyzelement 22d agoEither the vote doesn't matter and don't have it, or it matters and you vote for your people.
- dekervin 21d agoHumans live in a world made of symbols. A sign, in this case a map, carries much more than its literal meaning. It is loaded with context, connotation, and even myths. Maps are extremely powerful signs because they implicitly claim to organize the physical world. Consider, for example, the reference viewpoint of a map regardless of other features. The first time you see a map centered on another continent makes you realize that your vision of the world, where some parts are peripheral, is relative. Even if that fact is obvious. I don't know exactly what the effects of a change of projection are, but I know they exist.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]