Yeah but does the Indian education system actually use Mercator projection on their wall maps and geography learning material? E.g. how much is the average Indian citizen actually confronted with highly distorted map projections in their daily life (unless their professional job is involved with navigating ships of course where Mercator projections makes sense).
From my side of the world (Europe), this whole "Mercator projection is associated with colonialism" drama seems to have originated a couple of years ago in the US and was mostly amplified by artificial social media outrage.
At least from my own experience, the map used the most throughout school was the Mercator projection.
When I first discovered that Greenland and Canada were not really that big during one of my many wikipedia tours as a kid, I was incredibly disappointed.
I mean, of course we were shown a globe "once". My father had one at home too, though tucked away under a mountain of files and other things in his gigantic cabinet.
But 99% of the time, a kid would see the world via maps in books, notebooks, projected onto the board, etc.
And we didn't have a "geography classroom". We had one classroom for a set number of kids - like 8A, 8B, etc. (where "8" is the class/grade). The teachers would come in and go as per the period. The kids stayed right where they were.
not sure if this was sarcastic, but it's pretty common like this in austria, and if there are problems with the education system then this isn't one of them
It's from longer ago than that. There was a West Wing "big block of cheese" episode that made it out to be a white supremacy issue, when the map is really just a useful map for navigation.
It serves to aggrandize whatever softer basis might actually exist for the conclusion. Whether that's deliberate or the result of thoughtless use of useless platitudes, it's done with a disregard for honesty.
It is distasteful to make such accusations. Specially when the author has specifically left out the calculation and merely suggests of a “fraction” which is to be discovered with time.
It's not the only aggrandizing element of the blurb. The whole thing is baseless prediction presented as though it's hard truth, which is either deliberately dishonest or unconcerned with whether it's honest. If it's tasteless to point that out, I'll happily be crass about it.
Similarly in India. The college entrance exams (the biggest ones being JEE and NEET for engineers and doctors respectively) are the only thing you live and breathe from around the time you are 14 - 15 years old. Completely hollows you out.
OP here. IITian who went through that, absolutely loathed RG culture and how everything around exists to put blinders on you and focus on meaningless exams even after. Escaped to neuroscience right after. Our microschool exists because I would dearly love for that to be abolished. I think AI upending job markets and scoring processes might have an unintended good effect with regards to this.
Because you cannot hold people accountable, since it isn't "people".
We humans are emotional creatures, and we will always prefer systems where someone can be held accountable for mistakes. The developer, the doctor. Whoever.
I do not oppose AI integration; I'm not a Luddite. But having a "move fast, who cares if a couple die" isn't the way to go with sensitive fields, like the medical field.
I suppose we will come up with proper responsibility-hierarchies and guardrails around AI, but until then, people have a right to complain about the lack of them.
Except a couple of messages, most of the comments questioning our standards of AI integration have been downvoted into oblivion.
Even questioning is starting to feel like a crime here.
