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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

I have always found it a bizarre idea that we allegedly judge a country's importance by it's size on a Mercator projection map. Does anyone really think Greenland is the most important place in the world? Europe is tiny, yet the kind of people to complain about it will also complain about the outsized importance of it. Africa, which is apparently a victim of such projectionism, is also placed in the middle because of where the arbitrary Greenwich meridian goes.

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Also notable that in the centuries following Mercator projection, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the northern parts of South America actually shrunk by the map were regarded as vast, unexplored wildernesses full of resources to plunder (and the northern realms expanded by the projection as inaccessible icy wasteland). Difficult to imagine the Gall-Peters projection making conquistadors and colonists from little European countries more respectful of the inhabitants of the equatorial realms, though I guess they might have got lost more using it...

Ironically it's by looking at a globe rather than even a map like this that Greenlands worth becomes more visible. We need to centre the globe on Greenland and see what it tells us.

Greenland has at least two reasons to be worth more then it is now: in the future when the north polar ice sheet melts. The arctic circle becomes a navigable ocean. It's a short way from USA and Europe to Asia (or Russia).

Secondly removing the ice means it's much easier to get the essential hydrocarbons underneath of which there are lots of and which many countries will want.

So the reasons for Greenland is geography, security, control, trade and economy. And by thinking long term. It can also explain some off handed and mocked comments about Canada too.

In my childhood I definitely thought Greenland was a much physically large place than it is, because of the mercator world map the hung on the wall in home room. Was dumbfounded when I learned it actually fits within the continental US.

Agreed - territorial area is only one measure of importance, and probably not a great one. What would be more useful on a wall, if we are interested in such things, are bubbles with size showing population, GDP, life expectancy, etc. (a la https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles&url=v2 ), arranged to preserve, as much as possible, country positions on the projection of your choosing.

The Greenwich meridian is not actually 100% arbitrary. It is a convenient location that does not split into two any significant landmasses.

I don't think enough people talk about how lucky we are that the International Date Line can roughly follow a line of longitude 180 degrees from the Greenwich meridian. If you were on a planet with more land, or we could only draw it through the Atlantic or Australia, timezones would be a lot weirder.

It does split off part of Russia, I believe. The Florence meridian works slightly better for avoiding splitting any landmasses.

As I understand it, it's not the best location, it's just good enough and was very popular for historical reasons.

It's mostly a convenient location for a group based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich to define...

> Does anyone really think Greenland is the most important place in the world?

Well, no-one sensible. However.

"I love maps. And I always said: 'Look at the size of this. It's massive. That should be part of the United States.'"

That’s noted very stable genius Donald Trump, there, on the enormity of Greenland, and why it would therefore be something which it is sensible to somehow try to buy.

> I have always found it a bizarre idea that we allegedly judge a country's importance by it's size on a Mercator projection map

I don’t think anyone thinks this, because it is bizarre. It’s just that at some point we stigmatized calling out stupid ideas as long as someone is purporting to speak on behalf of non-Europeans.

Doesn't bringing up the topic of different projections still act as a good reminder that maps of spherical planets will always have one issue or another?

Graphical representations of things have an impact on preception and then by proxy on thinking. Maintaining aome degree of general awareness of these impacts leads to better thinking that is more reflective of the ground truth.

Some would call that "woke" with bad intentions, but hey, they got an agenda and that agaenda doesn't care about facts.

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