This map is not “upside down”. It looks that way to us; the sense that north is up is a deeply ingrained one. It's grim up north, Dixie is away down south. Yet this is pure convention. The earth is a sphere in space. It has a north and a south, but no up and down.There’s a famous experiment involving four guys and a door. An unsuspecting test subject is lured into a conversation with a stranger, actually a psychologist. After a few moments, two people appear carrying a large door, and they walk right between the subject and the experimenter.
Behind the door, the experimenter swaps places with one of the door carriers, who may be quite different in voice and appearance. Most subjects don't notice the swap. Perception is lazy: whenever it can get away with it, it merely tells us that things are as we expect, rather than actually showing us stuff. We often do not really perceive things at all. Did the subject really see the first guy? The second? Either?
The inverted map makes us actually see the Earth's geography, rather than just showing us the expected "countries" and "continents". I was struck by how parochial Europe is – the whole place is little more than a frayed end of the vast Eurasian landmass, no more impressive than the one at the other end, Russia's Chukotski. Africa dominates the scene: it can no longer be written off as that poor place at the bottom.
One of the most common observations in psychotherapy of people with depression or anxiety is that they hold themselves to impossibly high standards, although they have a perfectly sensible evaluation of everyone else. Their own failures are catastrophic; other people's are minor setbacks. Other people's successes are well-deserved triumphs; their own are never good enough, flukes, they don't count.
The first step in challenging these unhelpful patterns of thought is to simply point out the double-standard: why are you such a perfectionist about yourself, when you're not when it comes to other people? The idea being to help people to think about themselves in more like healthy way they already think about others. Turn the map of yourself upside down - what do you actually see?
29 comments:
Forgive my being OT, but I thought that this SSRI post might interest you.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/ssri-story-corruption-of-medical.html
Thanks, that's very interesting.
Bruce Charlton has some weird ideas about HIV but some good ones about psychiatry.
It should be mentioned though that the tinyness of Europe and hugeness of Africa is somewhat exaggerated by the 2D projection.
Not turned upside down, but unfolded. I like the description of Figure 7.
IIRC, the Mercator projection - what most globes use - does not represent countries' land mass in proper proportions. There are other projections that are more accurate. Pardon the lack of reference, but I'm sure I got this info either from a Richard Saul Werman or an Edward Tufte book.
re: maps - All 2D projections of a 3D object distort it; they just differ in what they preserve and what they trade out.
And re: change blindness (swapping out behind the door) - saying that this is a demonstration of how perception is lazy is odd, given that change blindness is mostly interpreted as evidence that we don't maintain a detailed internal model of the world, and that we rather simply refer to the world constantly when we need information. Perception is far from lazy.
In Norman Davies' (excellent) "Europe - A History" the maps of Europe were printed rotated by 90%. It was an excellent way to make you look again at the map and the ways geography has shaped events - for example the insight that going east-west there are only two main ways to go "round" the Alps. One of the reasons Poland ends up being such a common waypoint on invasion routes...
2IIRC, the Mercator projection - what most globes use...2: no, globes don't use a projection - they are just scale models of the real thing.
"...does not represent countries' land mass in proper proportions.."; that's not its purpose, which is to represent bearings accurately - it was therefore of use to navigators.
Arthur White: Ah, right. I knew it must have been done before. Sadly Europe: A History is one of those massive tomes that I keep meaning to read but probably never will...
"The inverted map makes us actually see the Earth's geography, rather than just showing us the expected "countries" and "continents". I was struck by how parochial Europe is – the whole place is little more than a frayed end of the vast Eurasian landmass, no more impressive than the one at the other end, Russia's Chukotski. Africa dominates the scene: it can no longer be written off as that poor place at the bottom."
That's some remarkable (implied) moral reasoning: Africa has a larger land area than Europe; therefore Europeans must assume responsibility for solving Africa's problems. Why not let the Chukchi handle it?
I didn't imply that. But my point is, when we look at the map normally, there is a tendency not to see that enormous area, but just to see "Africa" - a poor and insignificant continent.
Of course the physical size of Africa has no moral implications whatsoever, but it is interesting to me that it "seems bigger upside down" as this is a sure sign that we are doing some mental minimalization when it's the right way up... and that may indeed have moral implications.
(And true the 2D projection I used also reduces the size of Europe relative to Africa compared to the usual one, though no more so than the usual projections increase it; I actually used this one because it was the first good quality photographic map without any lines on it I found on Google. Turn the one I used upside down and I think Europe immediately seems bigger.)
This reminds me of the Thatcher illusion:
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/09/cool_visual_illusions_the_marg.php
"when we look at the map normally, there is a tendency not to see that enormous area, but just to see "Africa" - a poor and insignificant continent."
So Africa is not poor? (Why are we supposed to be pitying them again?) Africa is not insignificant (in terms of either impact on the daily life of the average European or contributions to human achievement)? Do the Chukchi need to feel ashamed for not putting Africa foremost in their thoughts? I'm detecting some possible traces of liberal white supremacism here.
Interesting accusation...that is always a danger when white people talk about the rest of the world. But I hope I'm not guilty of it.
Africa is not poor. The people who live there generally are extremely poor, but that's not inevitable; it's not as if everyone who lives on the continent of Africa has to be poor because it's fundamentally crap place. I think there's a tendency to (mentally) write off Africa as inherently poor and insignificant and hence to excuse all the stuff that goes on in African countries. "Yeah it's had more wars than elections in the last 50 years and more people have HIV than a TV but hey, that's Africa for you"
I think anywhere that people are so poor should be significant to the rest of us. I have no idea if we can usefully intervene or what the best interventions would be, that's not my area, but we have a responsibility to do as much as possible. The Chukchi would too if they were rich enough.
>>>The first step in challenging these unhelpful patterns of thought is to simply point out the double-standard: why are you such a perfectionist about yourself, when you're not when it comes to other people?
Motive behind motive: Because the person with the impossibly-high standard doesn't see the others as being on his/her level, therefore it's "OK" for them to fail or suffer setbacks? "Oh, it's too bad that happened to you." Unsaid: "That would never happen to me."
"The sense that north is up is a deeply ingrained one. It's grim up north, Dixie is away down south. Yet this is pure convention."
What else is the use of words than "pure convention"?
For me "up" is part of what "north" means. Whatever direction is up on a map I call north even if it isn't or I will turn the map until north is up.
But north and south are real directions. The Earth has a N and a S pole, a N and S magnetic pole, etc. Of course it's convention that we call them "north" and "south" but they are physically real.
Whereas N being up and S being down is entirely arbitrary. We could just as well have S as up, or N as 45 degrees to the left, or have no default orientation at all and let each map specify North with an arrow.
You know, the arse-over-tippiness doesn't matter in the least. What matter are
(1) Censoring out the Arctic and Antarctic,
(2) Centring Africa, and
(3) Having the light illuminate the deserts and thus catch the eye.
Ah, but would you have noticed any of those if it were the right way up? I don't think I would have. "It's a map of the world".
"Africa is not poor. The people who live there generally are extremely poor, but that's not inevitable; it's not as if everyone who lives on the continent of Africa has to be poor because it's fundamentally crap place."
Africa, the continent, is not resource poor. You'll get no argument from me there.
Africans, however, are not interchangeable with Europeans. 'The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."'
Natural resources don't equal wealth. The effective management of natural and human resources creates wealth. See Rhodesia versus Zimbabwe.
If you believe Europeans need to tell Africans how to live, then let them do it right and recolonize Africa. Otherwise, accept the fact that Africans are not going to cease being Africans, and people living at subsistence level who respond to any increases in available resources with population growth will continue to live at subsistence level for the foreseeable future. As it stands, Western "aid" enriches corrupt African elites, or in the "best" case leads to an increase in the number of poor, suffering Africans for you to pity.
You acknowledge "I have no idea if we can usefully intervene or what the best interventions would be", but you then go right on to assert "we have a responsibility to do as much as possible". (I'm curious what fraction of your income you personally earmark for Africa.)
I think we have a responsibility to let Africans live in a way that's natural and sustainable for Africans.
Hmm. Watson is obviously a smart cookie and I was annoyed when his speaking tour of the UK was canceled in the wake of his remarks re: Africa because I was going to see him and I didn't even get a refund...
But even supposing he's right and that Africans do lack say 15 IQ points on average vs Europeans. Who's to say that this would doom Africa to being as poor as it currently is? Poorer maybe, but that poor? If you believe the same data, East Asians have 5-8 higher IQ points than Europeans, but Europe is a lot richer than China.
Sub-Saharan Africa was uniquely screwed over by European colonization after all. We colonized Asia too but we did so by conquering existing nation-states; so when we left, they were regaining the independent existence they had had for centuries in most cases.
Whereas in Africa we just drew lines on the map as it suited us, and created 30-odd states out of nothing.
With the result that sub-Saharan African countries are not nation states, the various tribes/nations within each state are at each other's throats and chronic war and instability is the result. If someone came along and decided that Europe should be divided into rectangular states, instead of nation-states, I suspect that the same thing would happen. Both World Wars started over the rights of irredentist national minorities after all.
Now you may object that there were no nation-states in Africa when we colonized it, because Africa was at a primitive stage of development. However while that may be I don't think it undermines my point. Whatever the ultimate causes, the map of Sub-Saharan Africa is a mess.
"If you believe the same data, East Asians have 5-8 higher IQ points than Europeans, but Europe is a lot richer than China."
A reasonably high average IQ is necessary but not sufficient to maintain standards of living like those found in Europe or America. Europe is rich because Europeans invented modern technological civilization.
"Whereas in Africa we just drew lines on the map as it suited us, and created 30-odd states out of nothing."
I always find this argument hilarious. African tribes didn't fight before Europeans came along? There would be no conflict if Europeans hadn't drawn lines on maps and told different tribes they belonged to the same polity?
(Of course, you're right that "diversity" causes conflict. You or your children will likely get to experience this first hand. In case you haven't noticed, your elites are currently in the process of demographically transforming your country.)
Regardless, it's not war that's making Africa poor. If war (or disease, or famine) in Africa killed enough people, Africans would be richer. That's the Malthusian reality. Instead, population growth has outstripped productivity gains, and do-gooders seem to want to do their best to make sure that trend continues.
Population increase in Africa is supposedly beginning to slow and per capita GDP growth has I think been relatively high over the past few years, so Africans should be experiencing gains in standard of living. If you want to help Africans:
(1) Find ways to limit their population growth.
(2) Don't allow them to immigrate to the West. Let the most intelligent and enterprising Africans remain in Africa.
That's it. Bill Gates is not helping. Bono is not helping. You don't help by donating to a Bob Geldof telethon. I'd be fine with large African countries devolving into smaller and more homogenous states, but that's not going to make Africa significantly richer.
I didn't explain myself.
When you say north and south are real directions but which one is up (another real direction) is arbitrary you have arbitrarily created a meaning for north and south which is less than their conventional meaning.
Check out the peters projection map which accurately reflects land mass area, if you really want to see the relative size of the continents, and yes Africa is huge and Europe tiny. Here's a link:
http://www.petersmap.com/
Without getting too far into this fighting match over the poverty of Africa:
(1) The one thing I notice about Africa is that if you take away the Sahara desert, it doesn't look that much larger than Europe after all. In fact, the amount of "green" seems significantly smaller, and could explain why Africa is poor and insignificant. ;-) But I wouldn't seriously assert that until I saw some numbers (and considering Afghanistan, I'm not interested in writing off any poor, insignificant countries).
(2) Which "nation states" that Europeans conquered in Asia kept themselves stable after the Europeans left? India was not a nation-state before the Dutch and British arrived, and most of the rest of the nations have actually endured quite a lot of instability (unless one ignores the 1950s-70s). Some African nations have been a lot more stable than some Asian nations. Speaking only for myself, I'd rather live in most African nations than in Pol Pot's Cambodia.
I'm pretty sure the 2-D projection used in the map makes Europe appear bigger than it should be, not smaller. It laterally "stretches" landmasses closer to the poles, making them appear larger. So the effect of Africa appearing larger and Europe smaller would be even more apparent in a properly proportioned map.
It's actually pretty interesting how this sort of distorted map probably causes most people to think that North America and Europe are bigger than they really are.
According to this map the garden of eden is in Africa, which makes more since, because of the rich forrest and warm weather.
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