Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

by Hans Rosling

Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.

Only actively wrong “knowledge” can make us score so badly.

Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview.

But we need to learn to control our drama intake. Uncontrolled, our appetite for the dramatic goes too far, prevents us from seeing the world as it is, and leads us terribly astray.

But while the world has changed, the worldview has not, at least in the heads of the “Westerners.” Most of us are stuck with a completely outdated idea about the rest of the world.

Only 9 percent of the world lives in low-income countries.

low-income countries are much more developed than most people think. And vastly fewer people live in them. The idea of a divided world with a majority stuck in misery and deprivation is an illusion. A complete misconception. Simply wrong.

Just 200 years ago, 85 percent of the world population was still on Level 1, in extreme poverty.

But the fact that extremes exist doesn’t tell us much. The majority is usually to be found in the middle, and it tells a very different story.

billions of people have managed to slide up from Level 1 to Levels 2 and 3, without the people on Level 4 noticing.

Lasse Berg wrote an excellent report

Red the arfticls

What are people really thinking when they say the world is getting worse? My guess is they are not thinking. They are feeling.

“possibilist.” That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview.

The loss of hope is probably the most devastating consequence of the negativity instinct and the ignorance it causes.

Does saying “things are improving” imply that everything is fine, and we should all relax and not worry? No,

Remember that we live in a connected and transparent world where reporting about suffering is better than it has ever been before.

During my lifetime, Sweden moved from Level 3 to Level 4. A treatment against tuberculosis was invented and my mother got well. She read books to me that she borrowed from the public library. For free.

Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.

Child in incubation

More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.

In reality, the connection between religion and babies per woman is not so impressive.

The only proven method for curbing population growth is to eradicate extreme poverty and give people better lives, including education and contraceptives.

Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.

The media can’t waste time on stories that won’t pass our attention filters.

Fears that once helped keep our ancestors alive, today help keep journalists employed.

Will you feel fact-based hope that humanity will be able to prevent even more horrific deaths in the future?

Wow! I’d say the Chicago Convention is one of humanity’s most impressive collaborations ever. It’s amazing how well people can work together when they share the same fears.

This chapter has touched on terrifying events: natural disasters (0.1 percent of all deaths), plane crashes (0.001 percent), murders (0.7 percent), nuclear leaks (0 percent), and terrorism (0.05 percent). None of them kills more than 1 percent of the people who die each year, and still they get enormous media attention.

Something frightening poses a perceived risk. Something dangerous poses a real risk.

When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.

“In the deepest poverty you should never do anything perfectly. If you do you are stealing resources from where they can be better used.”

The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone.

It is not doctors and hospital beds that save children’s lives in countries on Levels 1 and 2. Beds and doctors are easy to count and politicians love to inaugurate buildings. But almost all the increased child survival is achieved through preventive measures outside hospitals by local nurses, midwives, and well-educated parents. Especially mothers: the data shows that half the increase in child survival in the world happens because the mothers can read and write.

So if you are investing money to improve health on Level 1 or 2, you should put it into primary schools, nurse education, and vaccinations.

In 1918 the Spanish flu killed around 2.7 percent of the world population.

Each swine flu death received 82,000 times more attention than each equally tragic death from TB.

Today, the people living in rich countries around the North Atlantic, who represent 11 percent of the world population, make up 60 percent of the Level 4 consumer market.

A lonely number always makes me suspicious that I will misinterpret it.

a rate per person—will almost always be more meaningful.

Strategic business planners need a fact-based worldview to find their future customers.

Sweeping generalizations can easily hide behind good intentions.

Cultures, nations, religions, and people are not rocks. They are in constant transformation.

Thirty-five years ago, India was where Mozambique is today.

Today, Muslim women have on average 3.1 children.

To control the destiny instinct, don’t confuse slow change with no change. Don’t dismiss an annual change—even an annual change of only 1 percent—because it seems too small and slow.

But my 50-year vision is that Africans will be welcome tourists in Europe and not unwanted refugees.” Then she broke into a broad, warm smile. “But the graphics were really nice. Now let’s go and have some coffee.”

single causes and single solutions the single perspective instinct.

The hospitals were of limited use if women could not reach them: if there were no ambulances, or no roads for the ambulances to travel on.

educators know that it is often the availability of electricity rather than more textbooks or even more teachers in the classroom that has the most impact on learning, as students can do their homework after sunset.

“We are not the healthiest of the poor, we are the poorest of the healthy.”

No single measure of a good society can drive every other aspect of its development.