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maps have always been a huge part of the
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human experience now for thousands of
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years the oldest map on record is the
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cattle halyuk cave painting in kanye
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turkey it's believed that this image was
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created sometime around 6200 bce which
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is roughly around an entire millennium
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before the advent of written language
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and ever since then maps have been
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around to help guide us to wherever we
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need to go and in many ways they
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determine how we think about the world
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around us but as it turns out maps can
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also be a massive source of miss and
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disinformation including my own that you
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see on this channel from time to time so
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as with everything in life you need to
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do your own due diligence and here are a
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bunch of examples why back in june of
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2019 an unprecedentedly long fire season
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began in australia lack of soil moisture
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as well as an uncommonly long dry season
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led to what became a long and terrible
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10 months of fires during the height of
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these flames an artist and designer
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named anthony hearsay created a 3d image
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of australia pulling data from nasa
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satellites he showed all of the places
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within the country that the fires had
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hit up to that point and while the image
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was quite compelling and relatively
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accurate within its intended context the
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map nevertheless became a cornerstone
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for false information as the image was
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spread across the internet as quickly as
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the wildfires they depicted a facebook
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page dedicated to the news of the
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australian fires reposted the photo with
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the new caption a 3d image of australia
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shot from a nasa satellite this version
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of the photo with that caption was then
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subsequently shared around 10 000 times
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then the apex of this mass spread of
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misinformation came when rihanna tweeted
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the photo to her at the time 96 million
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followers not long after that the image
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began being called out as false leading
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to both facebook and instagram initially
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flagging and taking down the original
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post until it was all cleared up by
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hearsay that he never actually at any
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point claimed that it was a nasa
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satellite photo so it's easy to see how
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something like this all gets out of hand
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the news coming out of australia at the
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time seemed so dire while at the same
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time the image appeared genuinely
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compelling and while it was a somewhat
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accurate 3d rendering of the culmination
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of all the fires up to that point it was
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absolutely not what it was being hailed
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as something going viral is a great way
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for information to be misinterpreted or
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misrepresented back in a 2014 article
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for slate bren blatt talked about a
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popular gif map that showed which baby
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names were most popular in every u.s
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state depending on the year but he
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points out that while the map is
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technically correct the information
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given isn't as straightforward as it
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appears at first glance for instance the
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name ashley is seemingly the most
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popular name for girls across the u.s in
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the years 1991 and 92. despite that fact
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however a child born in 1984 was 8
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percent more likely to have been named
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ashley than a child born in 1992 in fact
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1986 was the year when ashley peaked as
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a name within the u.s but the reason why
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the 91 and 92 years showed up on the map
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is because as ashley dipped in
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popularity as a name other names dipped
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even quicker so while this map isn't
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incorrect it can easily lead to an
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incorrect understanding of what was
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actually happening at the time now while
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some of these maps we've been talking
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about involve misleading statistics or
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false information that were believed to
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be true at the time
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cell phone coverage maps are just
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another thing entirely if you look at
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one of the maps provided by any of the
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big telecom companies you might feel
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confident in that fee that you're paying
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every month most of the companies show a
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map largely covered in different shades
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of the color of their choice 4g lte and
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even 5g is boasted around the majority
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of the us but in 2019 the fcc conducted
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a study to see if cellular data was
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actually available in all of the places
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that the larger telecom companies were
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claiming there was and as it turns out
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it wasn't even close the company with
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the highest amount of coverage was still
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under 65
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of what it claimed on their map with at
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least one company having coverage closer
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to around just 45
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of the area that it claimed the fcc is
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doing its best to get the telecom
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companies to fall in line because
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over-exaggerating about their coverage
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actually affects an even larger issue as
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technology and society advances it
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becomes more and more important for
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people to have internet access and
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cellular coverage but if there's money
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going to be put into infrastructure we
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need to actually know where there is
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coverage and where there isn't and while
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a map that's all different shades of
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purple might look nice and make it seem
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like the company is ahead of the game
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it's really just blocking access to
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parts of the country that might actually
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need it the most but that's just
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business right governments have never
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released any confusing or misleading
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maps before right of course they have
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after the 2016 u.s presidential election
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the voting maps that were often shown on
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tv and in articles were of the country
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divided into red and blue sections based
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on which counties voted for which
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candidate if you've ever seen a version
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of this map before you've seen that it's
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essentially just a sea of red across the
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country with some blue edges and a few
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scattered blue dots floating throughout
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the center and while within the lens of
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which county voted for which candidate
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this map is accurate it's nonetheless
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pretty misleading for instance
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regardless of which election it is
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painting any county a single color is
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often highly inaccurate in a pure win or
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lose ratio yeah one side lost and one
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side won however if a country is only
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one by one percent as has been the case
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with many counties across the u.s for
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the past several presidential elections
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than painting that entire county a
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single color doesn't truly represent the
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entire voter block if one is using the
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map to imply a landslide it just isn't
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accurate without the peripheral data
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coloring in every county in darker or
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lighter shades of red or blue would
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dramatically help with this accuracy
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problem but there's another inaccuracy
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inherent within this map as well if one
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looks at this map alone without any
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outside knowledge at all it might seem
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as if almost nobody in the country voted
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for blue well almost everyone voted for
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red instead in reality however the votes
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were much closer than this map suggests
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red received 62 million 984 828 votes
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while blue received
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fifty 65
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thousand five hundred fourteen votes
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which is well over two million more than
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red and the reason why this map fails to
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capture that closer spread is because
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it's the wrong one to use this is a map
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of land while an election map should
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really be a map of people for example if
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you look at the land map of the united
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states you'd see that new york state and
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arkansas are roughly the same size but
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there's only three million people living
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in arkansas while there's more than 19
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and a half million people living in new
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york that is well over six and a half
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times the population of arkansas and
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those are just states with similar sizes
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it gets even more bonkers when you look
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at a comparison of states like new
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jersey and wyoming by land mass wyoming
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is more than 11 times larger than new
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jersey but by population new jersey has
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more than 15 times the people of wyoming
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in fact tiny but crowded new jersey has
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nearly the same amount of people as
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wyoming utah idaho montana north dakota
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south dakota and nebraska do all
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combined but you can reduce the size
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comparison even further if you focus on
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just nine counties around america's two
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largest cities new york and los angeles
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you'll find that the votes cast in just
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these nine counties were only 260 000
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short of those cast in all seven of
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these entire states combined and thus if
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you look at a map of the united states
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based on where people actually live like
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this one you can clearly see a
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significantly more even and closer
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distribution of votes than the one that
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is based only on land and then there's
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all the fake stuff that used to be
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included on world maps that everybody
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just thought was real for hundreds of
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years like these strange mountains
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you've probably never heard about or
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ever seen before called the mountains of
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kong they were first referenced in a map
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of africa by a scottish explorer back in
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1798 and over the next hundred years
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until almost the beginning of the 20th
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century different maps continued showing
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this extensive mountain chain that
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simply never existed at all and yet as
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recently as
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1995 a world atlas still referenced them
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being there but the kong mountains
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aren't the only mapped geographic
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feature that never actually existed
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there's also the mexican island of
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bermeja which first showed up on a
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spanish map back in 1539. the belief
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that this imaginary island existed stuck
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around for so long that it wasn't until
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2009
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that the country of mexico officially
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announced to the world that it had
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finally been determined that the island
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of bermeja doesn't actually exist that
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is 470 years that some of the world
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believed a fake island existed all
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because it showed up on one map back in
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the 16th century and then of course
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there is the island of california the
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famous historical misconception that the
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baja peninsula region of mexico wasn't
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connected to the rest of the north
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american mainland a spanish novel from
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1510 referred to a magical island named
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california and so when hernan cortez and
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his men showed up in the 1530s they
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decided to name what they believed was
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an island california by the end of the
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decade however it was actually
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discovered that the land was in fact a
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peninsula but then for reasons that
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aren't really entirely clear nearly a
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century later in 1622 maps began showing
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the area as an island again and then it
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stayed that way across many maps for
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another century and a quarter until the
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king of spain fernand vi made it clear
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that california is not an island and
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ordered all new maps to reflect this
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however there are still maps all the way
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up until 1865
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the year when the u.s civil war ended
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the continued showing the baja peninsula
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as an island and then sometimes maps are
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less accurate in order to be more
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helpful for example the map for the
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london tube is pretty far off from the
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area's geographic reality the thames
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curves in places on the map where it
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doesn't in real life and vice versa
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distances between certain stops seem
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minuscule on the map but take longer
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than the rides between stops that look
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closer well-known stops and streets are
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listed in geographically incorrect
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places depending on if it's above ground
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or below and all of this is because of
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the simple fact that all of this complex
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geographic information needs to all fit
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on just a small and easy to read square
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map and what's most important on this
00:10:57
kind of map is to show the lines in
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places they connect to and end nobody
00:11:02
who needs to know how to get to a
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geographic location should be using a
00:11:05
map that is specifically designed for
00:11:07
something else but that's actually what
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most of us do with our world maps anyway
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the most commonly used world map is
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called the mercator projection map named
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after the cartographer gerdes mercator
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who created it centuries ago back in
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1569. now obviously a lot has changed
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since 1569 as have a lot of aspects to
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the map but the core way that the map
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looks at the world has stayed more or
00:11:30
less the same and that's the problem
00:11:33
because the mercator map was never
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initially intended to be used as a map
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for the common person it was made as a
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map for navigators where one could
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easily draw straight lines between the
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known ports of the world in fact the map
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was initially called a new and enlarged
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description of the earth with
00:11:50
corrections for use in navigation it's
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literally right there in the name but as
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the number of people traveling across
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the oceans increased over time this map
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became more and more widely used it also
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helps that the map-made countries in the
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northern hemisphere seem much larger in
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comparison to those that were in the
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southern during the age of colonialism
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it was a welcomed way of viewing the
00:12:11
world despite the original intentions of
00:12:13
just being an easy way to draw a line
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between two points now in modern times
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even if the mercator projection is the
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map used in classrooms many of us have
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been taught and are aware about the
00:12:23
map's glaringly obvious geographic
00:12:26
issues most infamous of all is the
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absurdly large size of greenland which
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appears to be roughly the size as the
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entire continent of africa despite in
00:12:35
reality only actually being just a tad
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smaller than the democratic republic of
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the congo in the continent's center
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antarctica covers almost the entire
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bottom quarter of the map despite being
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the third smallest of earth's continents
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alaska appears larger than australia
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despite being more than four times
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smaller in real life and consequently
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russia's inflated appearance has been
00:12:58
utilized several times in the u.s before
00:13:00
for propaganda purposes especially
00:13:03
during the cold war to create fear over
00:13:05
the supposed monstrous spread of
00:13:07
communism across the world all of this
00:13:09
distortion is due to the fact that the
00:13:12
projection is a cylindrical map based on
00:13:14
mercator's very specific needs when he
00:13:17
made it the further things are from the
00:13:19
equator the more their size inflates and
00:13:22
there's all sorts of math and science
00:13:23
regarding the hows and whys of the
00:13:25
mercator projection but the bottom line
00:13:27
is as with most world maps it's just
00:13:30
hard to show an accurate portrayal of
00:13:32
things that exist upon a
00:13:33
three-dimensional sphere in real life on
00:13:35
a flat rectangular two-dimensional
00:13:38
picture so while the mercator projection
00:13:40
succeeds at its original designed
00:13:42
intention it fails at mostly everything
00:13:45
else and then of course there is the one
00:13:47
thing that most global maps fail to show
00:13:50
north is not up and south is not down
00:13:54
the earth sits in space and in space
00:13:56
there is no top and there is no bottom
00:13:59
when looking at a map like the mercator
00:14:01
it presents the northern hemisphere
00:14:02
above the southern when the reality is
00:14:05
that that's all just a matter of
00:14:06
perspective north and south are only
00:14:09
directions but there is no top or bottom
00:14:12
to the earth a planet the southern
00:14:14
hemisphere isn't below the northern it's
00:14:16
simply on the other side of the equator
00:14:18
but because it's what most of us have
00:14:19
always known it's easy to understand why
00:14:22
one might consider north to be the top
00:14:24
of the map but as the south up
00:14:27
orientation map shows it's really just
00:14:29
as easy to see it all the other way
00:14:31
around even though to you this
00:14:33
perspective may feel strange it's just
00:14:36
as accurate of a view of earth's
00:14:37
geography as it is the other way around
00:14:40
a map with the north on top isn't lying
00:14:43
to us but it's also not telling us the
00:14:45
full truth because in the end maps are
00:14:48
only that a representation of a partial
00:14:52
truth
00:14:53
but you know what is a full truth the
00:14:55
best investment that you can make
00:14:57
probably isn't in designing a map but
00:15:00
investing in yourself as you probably
00:15:02
know we as people generally know what's
00:15:05
best for ourselves but we're pretty
00:15:07
often unable to transform healthy
00:15:09
behaviors into long-term habits
00:15:12
but that's exactly what fabulous is here
00:15:15
to help with fabulous is an app rooted
00:15:18
in behavioral science that helps you
00:15:19
build and maintain healthy habits you
00:15:22
can either do this a la carte by telling
00:15:24
the app what specific habits you want to
00:15:26
build or go through one of their curated
00:15:29
journeys which collect a number of
00:15:30
habits together to help you achieve an
00:15:32
overall goal for example i enrolled in
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an unexpected journey to help me out
00:15:37
with feeling more energized which begins
00:15:39
really easy by just making sure that
00:15:41
you're drinking enough water when you
00:15:42
wake up and then builds on from there
00:15:45
it's pretty much just like having your
00:15:46
own personal coach inside of your pocket
00:15:48
and it breaks down scientifically proven
00:15:51
healthy habits into small tasks that you
00:15:53
can easily achieve every single day so
00:15:57
whether you want to improve your sleep
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your concentration your diet your
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self-discipline or any one of plenty of
00:16:02
other habit changes fabulous can help
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you do the work you need to do and when
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you get a premium membership you're able
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you unlock all journeys and you unlock
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you stay motivated and starting is easy
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because the first 100 people to click
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the button that's on screen right now or
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heading down to the link below in the
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description we'll get 25
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off of a fabulous subscription it's a
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great way to improve your habits and
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help support real life lore at the same
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time and as always thank you so much for
00:16:36
watching
