I read it as the post is simply pointing out something that a large percentage of the population was not even aware about. I don't think it goes any deeper than that.
Why is it important that poor people live near the equator? I expect that a large part of the population is aware of this fact.
So bringing it up doesn’t contribute to the article and is a bit off in the article. Why not mention that the days are longer in the summer away from the equator. Or they people near the equator have darker pigment. Or many other true but irrelevant facts.
Because the equator in the Mercator projection is the closest to "true size"...which means that the wealthier nations, well above that, are in fact exacerbated in apparent land mass.
I like this site[1] for showing the true size of countries on a standard projection. Look at how much the US actually changes in size when you move it's latitude even a little.
Like it or not, the perception of scale of a problem is linked to apparent size - Africa looks smaller then it is, whereas the European countries look a lot larger then they are. When we talk about a problem affecting somewhere, the idea that "most of the world is experiencing it" is contraindicated by our maps even if only subconsciously.
No one claimed people do this. You have created a straw man-ception. Our awareness of the world is informed by distorted maps, even if it only impacts us subconsciously.
I don’t think you are getting what I’m saying. Greenland is larger than countries we spend far more time obsessing over with history lessons.
Importance in education and subsequently people’s mental models is not at all driven by size on the projection. It’s a dumb theory not backed by any real research.
