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I never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official
by JuniperMesos 24d ago
I never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official status that needed to be removed. It seems obvious to me that different map projections have different tradeoffs, and that any particular publisher of a world map can and does use whichever one makes sense for the information they're trying to convey.
- c048 24d agoThis was also exactly what I was taught in school when I was 10 years old. We also saw examples of other maps from other parts in the world that put their location front and center. That this map is a derivative of "a decolonization map", should be clear to anyone that this is just political posturing and not anything of actual use.
- TitaRusell 24d agoAt least they're not renaming any lakes.
- XorNot 24d agoI mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes? For the purposes of the UN that seems fairly relevant compared to Mercator which is a good map if you're actually navigating a coast line but atrocious if you're trying to gauge how big the territory you're talking about actually is.
- deleted 24d ago[deleted]
- rotringlvr 24d ago[dead]
- bentley 24d ago> I mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes? At the cost of distorting shapes and distances. > compared to Mercator The UN resolution compared Equal Earth to Mercator, a comparison Equal Earth easily wins in many circumstances. But the comparison should not be to Mercator, but to other widely used projections that do a better job of minimizing distortions generally, such as Winkel Tripel. The UN resolution is explicit that Equal Earth was chosen specifically for “social justice”–type reasons.
- XorNot 24d agoFor the purposes of an organization concerned with the demography of actual people, what is the value Winkel Tripel is bringing at the scales it would be used in general application? Because if you have a specific application then you choose the correct projection for the application. But if you're just showing a world map, then what's important? For the UN I'd say relative land mass size is a pretty relevant measure since that's where people live, and where environmental policy takes effect at the level of nation states it deals with. And it's also the change you can actually pass in a highly subjective area: a slightly different projection no one wants to vote for isn't a viable option in the first place.
- prmph 24d agoNo, the Mercator map has been the world map you'd see everywhere by default, and it is not that useful except for sailing, which most of us are not doing This is a correction to that.
- simonra 24d agoWhat are the practical uses of a world scale map beyond sailing? I mean they could be neat for visualizing some useful route calculated as vectors and further used as vectors, but it would still be of mostly an aesthetic value, appealing to the viewers emotions, which could be achieved just as well with some palm oil and sugar.
- prmph 24d ago> What are the practical uses of a world scale map beyond sailing? Wow, is this even a genuine question? I can use a world scale map to illustrate or explain some geographic point I make in a presentation. I can use it as a quick reminder of the geography related to some current news, etc. If the mariners want to continue using Mercator, who's stopping them?
- simonra 24d agoI remain unconvinced. Even with regional maps people struggle with conceptualising that similar distances at places even relatively close can vary dramatically in time needed to traverse, or with regard to energy/fuel cost to cover, or population density, or a number of things that are important in the moment. It would be extremely hard to use a world scale map to convey actionable information that couldn't be delivered better in another way, the more likely outcome is that it would just be misleading the audience by making them rely on their (almost certainly wrong) intuition rather than the information actually needed in the situation. As far as the news usecase goes I also don't really see how checking world maps would be applicable outside the news in question being consumed as entertainment, where my previous point on entertainment boiling down to personal pleasure and being fungible still stands.
- watwut 23d agoI mean yes, the countries demanding the change want the change for political reasons. They pushed for it hard. And they are from "other parts of world" namely Afrika. The only country that objectrd, for purely culture war reasons was Amerika.
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- boomboomsubban 24d agoI assume the UN is a major publisher of maps, often featuring them on all sorts of pamphlets, websites, and if television is to be believed that backdrop for smoke filled meetings. It makes sense they'd have a default and this would switch it.
- oblio 24d agoLook up status quo bias. People are very adverse to change and worse, they're very vocal about it.