Most of the world consists of small nations, compared to eg the US or Germany. About 130 of the 195 nations have less than 20 million people. The majority of all nations have less than 9 million people.

> If you're doing the census of an appartment block, do you count the flats or the people in each?

If I were doing a census of an apartment block, I would count the number of flats and the people in each. For conceptually the same reason it's a good idea to know how many households there are in a nation as well as how many people total.

You're right but I don't follow. Do you have a point or did you just really want people to count countries in addition to relevant population numbers?

My point was very clear, I spelled it out in the initial reply:

"The world is still extraordinarily backwards when it comes to gay marriage."

I then referenced the fact that 70% of European nations don't have legalized gay marriage, as partial supporting evidence for just how backwards most of the world is on this human rights matter.

The attempt was then made to rationalize the fact that the majority of European nations don't allow gay marriage. To which I replied accordingly. What's not clear about any of that?

Your assumption that the number of countries is more important than the proportion of people absolutely doesn't make sense to me.

Is 80% of countries representing 20% population more meaningful 20% countries representing 80% population? (Arbitrary numbers to illustrate my point.) I realise this is quite pedantic but I think measuring "covered population" is more relevant than measuring administrative repartition especially with the Schengen factor.

Of course there's progress to be made either way but can you explain to me in what way my heuristic isn't appropriate to you?