alt Hacker NewsAs 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.
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Why 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?
Its 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.
Why would anyone object to reducing their inflated size to normal size if it means artificially shrunk continents can be seen at their true size?
I 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.
I'd love to hear from the folks that downvoted this carefully neutral observation.
> 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.