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Saturday, Mar 05, 2022 - 01:13 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Maps Of Meanings

Well, this may be the first time in my (short) associate editorial career, that organizing wartime aid's been mentioned as a reason for being late to submit a review (by a Czech academic). As it is, Elsevier has put out an open plea for fair play when it comes to papers including Russian authors, and in any case my position has generally been not to want to know authors' identities/affiliations in the first place; it's not like there aren't enough obstacles in the way of paper acceptance to begin with. This stance is hardly as widespread as the AoD bloc would probably like it to be, mind; while America is weighing sanctions on India for their neutrality thus far, it may be telling that they can't even get neighbours Mexico on their side for this, ditto allies (?) Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with Pakistan and China already in on new likely-discounted Russian trade deals. Not quite what the Anglo media is insinuating?

Switching the topic a little, we've all heard of Max Zeng, the "Human Atlas" who has done Singapore proud by pwning all comers with his seemingly-photographic geographical knowledge, in the British University Challenge quiz show. However, this is not through forced cramming or superhuman memory, according to the man himself. Instead, it's down to "understanding the relationships between people and places".

This certainly makes a lot of sense, seeing as to how many memorization techniques reduce to creating these relationships or associations where they don't exist (e.g. mnemonics for the digits of π). In geographical terms, brute-forcing the locations of, say, countries in Africa might be a tall order in itself. However, once one picks up more and more (historical) facts about the places (e.g. the story of King Solomon [and his dynasty] and the Queen of Sheba hints at the positions of Ethiopia, Yemen and prominent spots between them), many facts and hypotheses can be derived (as in mathematics, actually) with pretty high probability; of course, there's no getting about memorizing some arbitrary basics (e.g. characters in new languages, the twelve times table), so there's that.

Anyway, Zeng went on to say that "...if they knew (his) political and geopolitical views, they'd be mortified", but really, I concur that logical and informed viewpoints are as likely as not to get one banned or shunned from Reddit/Twitter/"polite society" nowadays, from all the idiocy that such platforms have cultivated through modding/astroturfing. Further on education, a local MP (and ComfortDelGro CEO) has just suggested that local university degrees should have a five-year expiry date, with refresher courses for renewal. The netizen reaction to that was utterly predictable. But yes, back to the maps.

First, reposting our own Vaccine Bloc map from January:



A bloc map for the Second Cold War, as featured on the Chinese Wikipedia portal for the event, apparently since May 2021:


(Source: wikimedia.org)


[N.B. India notably expected to lean West in this telling; also, Cuba for one appears generally back in the Red camp, as one of the more-glaring exceptions in the Vaccine Bloc map]

Only countries in blue have condemned the invasion (and, as we have seen, that might not even be accompanied by sanctions):


(Source: wikimedia.org)


The corresponding United Nations emergency session vote, only countries in green were actively in favour of demanding Russian withdrawal:


(Source: wikimedia.org)


[N.B. It does seem that South America has largely been whipped into line on this matter, as foreshadowed and as can be observed by diff-ing from the Vaccine Bloc map; notably, Singapore voted yea and went as far as to impose sanctions for once, which wasn't well-received by the local embassy, with dumplings and cats* caught in the crossfire. Our Foreign Minister has justified this stand as being based on the principle that "might does not make right", to which cynical netizens noted that the same principles were not paraded against American invasions ironically based on arguably greater might. It remains to be seen if our airlines do quietly take advantage of opportunities opened by Russia closing their airspace to their sanctioners...]

[*Mr. Ham wishes to state that they deserved it.]

On to maps showing the military situation in Ukraine. This is of course highly dynamic, but the differences in presentation may yet be telling. First, the Wikipedia version circa 4th March:


(Source: wikimedia.org, click for full size)


The same in Chinese on Weibo, labeled 3rd March:


(Source: 4chan.org, click for full size)


And what the Russians are putting out, including the Ukrainian main force supposedly trapped in a pocket in the east:


(Source: 4chan.org, some translations, click for full size)


Of course, these depictions (also from the Institute for the Study of War, The Bazaar of War and the Polish Eastern Studies Institute) etc. tend to be hotly disputed, due to how they can impact public perception.

And are the Europeans up to the challenge? Let's see:


(Source: quora.com, similar variants)


"Wake up your idea" doesn't sound too inappropriate, as it stands - or, as the Wall Street Journal wisely puts it, "Russia's war against Ukraine could restore Western societies' appreciation for freedom and democracy. These principles have been eroded for decades by leftist ideologies and illiberal philosophical fads".

And as to how the situation will develop, it might be worth it to visit Metaculus, a crowd forecasting website following the Superforecasting methodology (previously discussed here). They've put up a Ukraine Conflict Challenge, with some pretty well-subscribed questions such as whether Kyiv will fall to Russian forces by April 2022 (61% probability, from 1,087 forecasters), whether Russia will take over at least three of the six major cities they are threatening by June (85% probability; 560 forecasters; Kherson apparently already taken), and whether there will be a bilateral ceasefire before 2023 (66% probability; 235 forecasters). The comments alone appear far more thoughtful and considered on the whole than the one-sided rah-rah on say the Reddit default subs, that's for sure.



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Next: Tongues Of Conflict (Part I)


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