(Facts about our World in order to have a better understanding) - by Hans Rosling
Most people have grossly inaccurate views of the world we live in. When we’re asked simple questions about global trends, we systematically get the answers wrong and see the world to be much worse than it really is. In Factfulness, Hans Rosling presents 10 dramatic instincts that distort our perceptions, as well as detailed facts and statistics about the real state of our world today. In our Factfulness summary, we’ll explain the 10 key mental filters and how to recognize/manage them to develop a fact-based worldview, to avoid unnecessary stress and improve our ability to make sound decisions.
Over the years, Rosling has been presenting questions about global trends (e.g. poverty, health, environment) to thousands of people worldwide. He discovered that people generally believe that the world is getting worse, when facts and data show that the world is getting better. For example, in the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost halved. Yet, only 7% of the people surveyed got that right; the majority believed that the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has remained the same, or has almost doubled.
Most of us don’t see the world as it is, because we sift the inputs through a mental filter that favors dramatic information. Thus, we tend to have an exaggerated and overly-negative view of the world, which creates unnecessary fear and stress. When we’re operating on the wrong facts, we can’t develop sound solutions or make good decisions.
We’ll now give a synopsis of the 10 dramatic instincts and zoom in on the first instinct in more detail. Do get a copy of our **full 15-page summary** for a detailed overview of all 10 instincts, or get the full mojo (complete with statistics, charts and examples) from **the Factfulness book.**
We tend to divide things into 2 distinct groups and imagine a gap between them, e.g. good vs bad, rich vs poor. This is one of most damaging instincts as it creates an imagined chasm that leads to all sorts of mis-perceptions.
In particular, most of us still mentally divide the world into 2 parts: developing non-Western countries vs developed Western countries. This notion is at least 20-30 years outdated. In the book Rosling presents various statistics to explain where/how our estimations go wrong, and shows that it’s much more meaningful to look at the world with 4 levels of income:
In a nutshell, the majority of people today (5 out of 7 billion) live on Levels 2-3 and have some degree of choice and buying power. While people living in extreme poverty (Level 1) still suffer from high child mortality rates, malnutrition and terrible living conditions, they are now the minority, not majority of the world population. In our complete Factfulness summary we elaborate more on each of the 4 levels and how countries move up the levels over generations.
When we split the world into 2 distinct groups with a big gap in between, it suggests conflict between the groups. In reality, things usually fall on a spectrum—there’re no distinct lines between groups, and most groups share a lot in common. Specifically, there are 3 types of “gap stories” that trigger our gap instinct:
Averages help to simplify information, but draw our attention to the gap between 2 sets of numbers. For example, when you compare the average incomes between 2 groups (see the left diagram below), it creates the perception that there’s a clear separation between the groups, when in reality the areas of overlap may be greater than the differences (see the right diagram below).
