taw comments on The Hidden Origins of Ideas - Less Wrong

4 Post author: cleonid 28 March 2009 02:27AM

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Comment author: taw 28 March 2009 11:58:36AM 5 points [-]

Considering two completely arbitrary numbers (45%, 10%), taking percentage of Protestant relative to believers not population, very vague concept of "Marxism" (all social democratic parties are somewhat Marx-influenced, and you only picked those), your grouping together East and West Germany, even through in this context they're very much not, and that most variables in Europe tend to be somewhat continuous geographically ... You have so many free variables to manipulate here you can make it perfectly align with popularity of Pokemon vs Dora the Explorer, or pop vs techno.

Comment author: ciphergoth 28 March 2009 12:12:44PM 5 points [-]

Also note that the maps do all differ from each other, and our impressions are created by which countries have the most land area - it doesn't even use a population cartogram.