Talk:1500: Upside-Down Map

What's the point? 108.162.249.173 09:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, part of the joke which is hinted at but never explicitly stated in the explanation, is that normal south-up orientation maps are just as "correct" as their north-up counterparts, but they still appear "wrong" to us. The fact that correctly projected south-up maps feel "wrong" supposedly reveals some deep-seeded biases about how we view the world, or at least shows that we have very limited and rigid worldviews. The joke here is that this map isn't just showing the world differently, it's blatantly distorting the geography of the entire planet. At a glance, you may think it's a typical south-up map, but the humor is revealed as you notice all the new associations created by the rotation. 173.245.54.194 14:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Australia is still the "right" way up! -- Thematkinson (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No it is not. But Tasmania stays put as it is an island. Maybe that has caused some confusion? --Kynde (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

What sort of projection have you been looking at if you think these three look the same when rotated 180 degrees? I'd forgive someone for thinking that about New Guinea, but for the other three it just seems laughable. Especially if you know what "map of Tasmamia" is slang for. 108.162.249.190 14:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

"People often say that maps with the south pole at the top will change your perspective." Is this really something that people often say? I've never heard anyone say it... --Pudder (talk) 10:06, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I have heard it... --Kynde (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Pudder. Who are these people and how often to they say it? Explanation edited. - Equinox 199.27.128.120 15:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I disagree, I NEVER heard it until NOW in XKCD. (141.101.103.208 21:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC))

Is perhaps the comic's explanation about a previous map version? The comment about Australia being the normal way is wrong. 108.162.254.80 10:10, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

could be - I see Australia as being pivoted just like all the other continents (?) -- Brettpeirce (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Agreed - see my comment above when this was first mentioned here. Now it has been corrected in the explain. --Kynde (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Should the title text not say South Korea, rather than North Korea? 141.101.106.101 10:41, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Well it is North Korea we have issues with today. But maybe it is not the former South Korea instead...? --Kynde (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

UK was rotated, Japan was not rotated. Sardinia, Cyprus and other are missing. Hmm... is it a pre-alpha release? 188.114.103.245 13:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Japan sure looks rotated. Maybe it just looks similar upside-down? 108.162.237.180 13:45, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Japan is rotated. As a Sardinian, I noticed the absence of Sardinia (and Sicily) and now I'm wondering whether I'd live near Japan (my sister would be extremely happy about it) or near China 108.162.229.246 14:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Then why northern Hokkaido is towards north, and only Honshu is rotated? 188.114.103.245 16:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

It is not that Japan is rotated. It is the individual island that are rotated. So the island to the north would still be to the north. And also this map is not so detailed that you can expect to see the difference if some fairly rotational symmetric islands are rotated. Also - thee are many islands that are not included. But for Sardinia and Cyprus. Since they are islands they will not be rotated with the Mediterranean Sea. So they would stay far away from Japan. Progably under some part of Asia where there is no seas to show them. The fact that many island must disappear after the rotation, and also the likeliness that some islands that are shown should have disappeared is mentioned in the explain --Kynde (talk) 18:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

The explanation is inaccurate in a few spots in the "jokes" section. Specifically, all the points that say "X is now on the east/west (formerly west/east) of Y" are inaccurate. The whole point is that the spatial relationships of the land masses are unchanged with respect to the cardinal directions. In other words, Cuba is still off the east coast of the US, it's just that Seattle is where Miami used to be. 173.245.54.193 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Well someone changed this back from the true version. I have changed this back. Also the main part of this "joke" was that it was now next to the Canada. It would just be wrong to say it was only next to the Canada as was written originally, since it is next to the border between US and Canada. Made a small correction also for this to be more clear. --Kynde (talk) 18:37, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I always wanted a height-inverted map (ocean trenches are mountain ridges, and vice-versa), with realistic national boundaries set upon the land (that was sea) based on where they might have existed in the sea (that, for us, is land). But I suppose one could go too far in such fripperies... ;) 141.101.98.63 14:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I thought this was a reference to clickbait based on the caption, where you are told it will change your perspective, and it didn't, it was just a stupid map. 199.27.128.173 16:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Yay comic 1500! 17:48, 18 March 2015 (UTC) or 12:48, 18 March 2015 (EDT)

It's not on the map, but I'm curious what happens to Antarctica in this little exercise? 108.162.216.53 17:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Not that much probably since it is faily centered on the pole and except for one "tail" it is rather rotational symmetric. --Kynde (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

What's the island southwest of Newfoundland? It looks large for Prince Edward Island, and most of Nova Scotia isn't an island. 173.245.52.160 19:08, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

While Randall will know which squiggles arise from which real-world features, I reckon there'll be some contention regarding the small islands, given the resolution of the 'pen and ink' sketch doesn't do justice to the smallest (and often least familiar, to start with) perimiter-shapes. I've just gone and edited the bit about "The Falkland Islands" (mainly because I didn't like the technical "it is", grammatically... maybe the better solution would have been for me to just to have made it "The Falkland Islands group|archipelago", though) and while I was there allowed for the fact that it's actually hard to say what that single island blob is precisely intended to be representative of. Note all the other little rocks also out there (but not generally lumped into the same island group), like South Georgia, and the nigh-on numberless ones of similar scale elsewhere around the planet, like the Canaries. Or the Hawaiian islands (if those aren't represented by the above-questioned blob).141.101.98.63 19:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be rather Colombia and maybe Venezuela that could claim the Falklands? Ecuador and especially Peru are way too in the North I think. --Nezmo (talk) 21:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Can someone explain why an upside down map changes your perspective? I've seen many before but no explanation of why it is any different. 141.101.98.222 07:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

There are three main reasons I have heard for upside down maps changing one's perspective, although only the first one is inherently a question of vertical orientation. 1) We associate up-ness with superiority. Because we read top down and therefore habitually see what's at the top of a page as being first, but also as evidenced by phrases like "things are looking up", "at the top of her field", "coming out on top", "high up in the organisation", "top of the food chain", etc. etc. Wikipedia mention this in their page on South-up Map Orientations, and cite a paper "Spatial Metaphor and Real Estate North–South Location Biases Housing Preference", which claims to have demonstrated it with various studies. You can google the paper and read its abstract for free. 2) The fact that most maps one sees in Europe put Europe in the centre makes everything else seem a bit peripheral. 3) The projection increases the size of countries towards the top and bottom of the map, relative to those in the middle, so that, for example, Greenland and Africa look about the same size, when really Africa is 14 times larger (that factoid comes from an article in The Economist entitled "The True True Size of Africa"). Although this doesn't significantly increase the relative size of Europe and America, because they're about in the middle, it does make e.g. Canada and Russia seem much larger than they are, and massively diminish the relative size of Africa. I imagine, speculatively, that this could be a big deal for Africans who feel that the importance of their continent is overlooked. (I'm not familiar with the protocol on this page, so I haven't included links to the articles I mentioned, but anyone who wants to can easily do so.) 108.162.229.165 10:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, the point of this comic is an observation of a fact how much of our deep-rooted and regarded as inevitable inter-human dealings and problems are utterly determined by purely random factors such as Earth plate tectonics and the actual nick of time (in the geological scale) at which human civilization developed into a global one. -- 141.101.88.225 12:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

I interpreted it as a reference to the book by (recently deceased) Terry Pratchett, 'Nation', one of the messages of which was "changing the way you look at the map changes your perspective". 141.101.98.32 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Chile is rotated, but "Tierra del fuego" part of Chile and Argentina is not moved, and missing the divition on Chile and Argentina sides, and named "Tierra del fuego" rater than "chile" "argentina", so there is either Randall not remmember that "tierra del Fuego" is either that island and to some extent a liitle of the sourth cone of Chile/Argentina after the Patagonia or think in it a a holw different countrie or something else. (141.101.103.208 21:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC))