Factfulness: Ten Reasons We Are Wrong About the World

 Factfulness : Ten Reasons we are wrong about the world 

By Hans Rosling 

 

Preview 

Open your eyes and see the world for what it is. Factfulness is a book that implores people to rely on a fact-based worldview and let go of misconceived notions. Along with data and facts which will open your eyes, this book will provide you the tools to lead a more factful life. Adopting such an approach will help us to discover that the world is much better than we feel it is. 

About the Author 

Hans Rosling was a Physician, academic, and statistician who co-founded the Gapminder Foundation. He had extensive experience in public health, and spent a significant part of his life, promoting the use of facts and numbers, to explore and solve developmental issues. This book is Hans's last as he was diagnosed with incurable Pancreatic cancer. His son Ola, who is a statistician himself, and Anna-Ola's wife- helped co-write this book. 

Do you think you know the world? You are probably wrong! Explore the reasons behind our lack of understanding of the world and learn how to eliminate them. 

Pick up a newspaper, or switch on your TV, it seems that the world is soon going to end. War in Syria, thousands killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, Religious fundamentalism increasing, terrorist attacks, the malnourished children of Somalia, suffering, and poverty, the spread of infectious diseases, deaths from natural disasters. Anyone would be inclined to think that there is nothing in this world that is going right, and suffering is increasing. Is the world going from bad to worse? 

In this book, Hans Rosling argues that it indeed is not the case. In fact, with his data-based arguments and assertions, he goes on to prove, that the world is becoming a better place even as we read this! All that is needed to see this is a fact-based approach. A way of understanding the world through facts.  

In this quid, you will discover: 

1. Why people fall for the attention filter 
2. Why the East-West divide is no longer present. 
3. Why the next big markets will be in Asia and Africa 
4. Why probably your parents and grandparents are responsible for pharma companies not providing medicines to the poor. 

 

There is widespread ignorance about the world we live in, and it is because of our dated knowledge and actively misconceived worldview 

In 2015, at the World Economic Forum, the author asked a bunch of multiple-choice questions to an audience comprised of top politicians, businessmen, researchers, activists, and the likes. The questions were about poverty, population trends, and the availability of basic healthcare. While the majority of the audience could answer the questions related to poverty correctly, they performed abysmally on the other two subjects. Their response to these questions indicated an extremely negative worldview that was entirely misconceived. 

How could such a bunch of people, educated and accomplished, responsible for solving the world's problems, actually solve them if they had the wrong ideas about the world, and thought that it was much worse than what it was? 

If given a multiple-choice question that has 3 choices, even a chimpanzee will pick the correct answer 33% of the time with the choices being completely random. Human beings as it turns out, are very often worse than Chimps! How can our results be worse than random pickings? Hans asserts it's due to a combination of dated knowledge, and an overtly dramatic worldview, which leads to "systematically wrong" answers.  

Our brain, which constantly makes snap judgments based on intuition, also makes us inclined towards drama, and this, in essence, is at the root of our ignorance and mistaken beliefs. While an upgrade in knowledge is easily possible, it is our dramatic instincts that need to be dealt with for us to develop a fact-based understanding of the world. The truth of the matter is that the world is getting better year by year as a rule, and while it still has several challenges, many of which are pretty serious, our progress is undeniable. 

There are ten instincts we need to be aware of which make our worldview skewed and mistaken 

1. The Gap Instinct: We tend to see things in black or white, rich or poor, haves and have nots. The reality is quite different with generally things being in a smooth range. 

 

1. The Fear Instinct: With limited mental bandwidth to process abundant information, our brain auto-selects the dramatic. This is the reason why you will never hear about the gradually falling death rates due to natural disasters in the world (from 450 per million in 1965 to 10 per million in 2016) but will instantly hear of an earthquake that kills a few thousand in a particular year. 

 

1. The Negative Instinct: As it turns out, we have an eye for the bad. We notice bad things much faster and much more than good things.  

 

1. The Straight-line Instinct: Not everything follows a straight line. The world population is not expected to increase indefinitely in a linear fashion. For example, the number of children in the world currently is estimated to be about 2 billion, it will be the same by the year 2100, with the world population expected to stabilise at about 10-12 billion. This is because the number of babies born per woman has reduced drastically and is expected to reduce further. 

 

1. The Size Instinct: We have a propensity to assign importance to a number in isolation. The truth is that most often a number alone doesn’t convey anything unless it is compared to other numbers. In 2016, nearly 4 million babies died according to data released by UNICEF. While the number seems huge, if put into perspective with 14 million: the number of babies who died in 1950, it becomes apparent how 10 million fewer babies have died in 2016, compared to 66 years ago.  

 

1. The Urgency Instinct: We are driven by the call to action on several occasions. And often it clouds our judgment and distorts our worldview. While the urgency instinct, is, and was, essential for immediate dangers, for understanding the world better, it is hardly useful and can lead us to make the wrong decisions. 

 

1. The Single Perspective Instinct: If you give a child a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We often fall prey to a single perspective. It is common for us to look for people and information which confirms our own beliefs. This leads to a confirmation bias so to speak, which hampers an objective view of the world. One must constantly test one's beliefs to learn more about a particular problem. 

 

1. The Generalization Instinct: Generalization has held us in good stead and enables our brain to make quick judgments. However, it is also the cause of several of our misconceptions. When asked what percentage of the world's 1-year old children were vaccinated against some disease, a vast majority of highly educated people massively underestimated the percentage, which in reality is about 88%. 

 

1. The Destiny Instinct: Our proclivity to assign the fates of a group of people, or a culture, to destiny, also hampers our understanding of the world and distorts our perception of it. So many people mistakenly believe that countries in Africa will never catch up with the west because the Africans have certain innate traits that will never let them catch up.  

 

1. The Blame Instinct: Our urge to find simple explanations leads us to find a scapegoat. To understand the world better, it is important to focus on the causes rather than a single villain. For example, the hundreds of refugees who died while fleeing from Syria, died because they had to undertake perilous journeys, not because they liked to be smuggled overseas or had less money, but due to the immigration policies of the EU, as well as the responsibilities assigned to the airlines of identifying refugees -a task which is nearly impossible. 

 

Something can be bad, and at the same time, getting better than before 

How on Earth can someone be oblivious to the inequality that is present in the world? The suffering due to poverty and lack of healthcare? The child mortality numbers? The violence in the world? Many people would ask such questions to someone who says that the world is getting better. After all, if the ills mentioned above exist, how can the world be getting better?  

Here it is important to note that while there are several ills and sources of suffering in the world which persist and present tough challenges, the key thing to underline is that the state of the world cannot be seen in isolation. There has to be a comparison from how it was earlier. So, the sufferings, poverty, child mortality, etc., still present challenges, but the truth of the matter is that their magnitude has reduced drastically over the last few decades.  

It is interesting that as soon as such a comparison is made, it becomes evident that we live in a much better world than our parents did when they were the same age as us. And they lived in a much better world than their parents did when they were the same age as them!  

Though the world is getting better, and the change is gradual but persistent, it is not wrong to say that things are bad. However, it is important to realise that things can be getting better, even when they are still bad.  

For example, there are no countries in the world where child mortality rates have increased in the last 40-50 years. In all the countries, irrespective of their location and culture, the rates have reduced drastically. In Tanzania, where the child mortality rate is 56 (which means that 56 children die before the age of 5 for every 1000 live births), it is easy to assume that things are very bad since the world average is about 41. However, in 1960, the said number was 242, hence, it is clear that Tanzania, while still having a higher child mortality rate than the world average, has made remarkable progress in about 50-55 years. 

 

Extreme Poverty has reduced drastically in the last 200 years. The world is now divided across four income levels rather than the binary: Developed and Developing, East and West 

The notion of the world divided into two distinct groups of countries: The developed, and the developing, or East and West, is a thing of the past. Over the last 50 or so years, the world has seen a remarkable shift, and now a vast majority of people: about 75%, live in middle-income countries, and only about 9% of the people live in countries that can be described as poor.  

The world can be divided broadly into four income levels, and the vast majority of the population lives on level 2 and level 3, the middle-income group. Level 1 corresponds to extreme poverty and Level 4 corresponds to the richest countries (Europe, North America, Japan, etc.). 

Have things gotten better? Absolutely. In 1800, nearly 85% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty with no access to basic healthcare. Compare this to today, when nearly 5 billion out of 7, enjoy life in the middle-income level. High income and middle-income people make up nearly 91% of the world today.  

Even in poor countries: those on level 4, things are not as bad as most people think. Nearly 60% of girls finish primary school in these countries, most have enough to eat, and there are basic healthcare facilities in place. Of course, in countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, and Sudan, the numbers are much worse, but these countries are more of exceptions than the rule. 

 

News Reports and Media present a skewed perspective of the world which serves to satisfy the attention filters inherent in us 

With all the news channels, and newspapers, and other media of news constantly bombarding us with bad news, how can the world be a better place? As it turns out, more news about bad events and ills which exist in the world doesn’t mean that more of it is happening. It means that we SEE more of it. 

The journalists are also human beings like us, and as such, they too are driven by the drama instinct, wherein the news or event which possesses sufficient drama, is selected for dissemination. Normal, gradual, and incremental progress is boring and not newsworthy.  

As a rule, one must always expect bad news. Why? Because as mentioned above, the good news is not news. Gradual increments in income levels, child mortality rates, or the ever-falling rates of malaria deaths are not news. 

Being aware of the naturally skewed perspective of news will help us to realise that more news, doesn’t mean more suffering. It probably means that there are more distributors of news, armed with a network that can reach and dig out events in more corners of the world than ever before. 

Income levels are strongly correlated to traits which are termed progressive 

Many people believe that certain countries and groups of people lag behind due to their culture or religion. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Traits which are considered to be exhibited by "poor' countries, like the number of babies per woman, or, child mortality rates, are strongly correlated to the income levels of these countries, and there is no reason why these numbers wouldn’t improve with increased income levels. 

The fact of the matter is that people at a low-income level, say, level 1, tend to have more children. This is true for Christians, just like it is true for Muslims, and thus, it doesn’t have anything to do with culture or religion. Why? Simply because at level 1, more children are expected to perish due to lack of access to healthcare, poor nutrition, and other problems typically experienced in poor countries. Hence, people have more children! 

As a supporting example, take the case of Iran: a Muslim country. As its income started to rise significantly with the discovery of oil, the country started to change. "Westerners" would be surprised to know that the fastest drops in babies per woman in the world have been experienced in Iran. A fact that has gone largely unreported in the media. The change is due to increased income levels, a much-improved level of education, and improved access to healthcare infrastructure. 

 

Africa and Asia will be the next big markets, and high-income countries and big multinationals must focus their attention on these geographies. 

Currently, roughly 1 billion people live in the Americas, Europe, and Africa, By the end of this century, the populations of the Americas and Europe are expected to be at the same level, while the population of Africa is expected to increase. If one has a fact-based view of the world, it is easy to see that a big volume of consumers is emerging in Asia and Africa. 

 Rather than focusing on micro-segmenting the saturated markets of North America, Europe, and Japan, Companies must focus their attention on the continents where most of humanity is present, and where most middle-income and high-income consumers will live in the future.  

UN data indicates that by 2040, nearly 60% of people on level 4 will be outside the "West". Most of these people will be in Asia and Africa, and businesses stand to lose out if they don’t pay attention to this fact. 

Big multinational pharma companies are busy pouring billions of dollars into research for revolutionary new drugs which can cater to the level 4 markets as their profits drop. They don’t realise that their profits can be shored up by catering to the billions of people in countries living at level 2 and level 3.  

What is required is not a product breakthrough but the provision of the basic life-saving drugs at a reasonable price to crack a huge market that exists. It is important to ask why these companies do not venture into these markets when enough data exists to support such a foray.  

The answer is that it is the shareholders of these companies, the investors in their stocks, who are ignorant about the world and do not care whether the pharma companies crack markets and provide medicines to the poor. Pharma stocks are quite stable, and hence, several retirement funds are investors in their stocks. So, the real people to be blamed for the pharma companies' lack of interest in providing medicine to the poor, are your parents and grandparents! 

While we swim in our misconceived notions even as the world is getting better, there are certain undeniable challenges which we face 

That the world is getting better doesn’t mean that things are not bad. There are several threats and challenges which loom before us, and we should spend and focus our energies to counter and eliminate these issues, rather than be lost in an era of information overload and false causes. 

A global pandemic like the Spanish Flu, which spread across the planet just after the second world war, killed nearly 50 million people, many more than those killed in the great war itself. Almost 2.7% of the world's population was wiped off, and the deaths in that period caused a massive dip in life expectancy by 10 years. A highly transmissible and virulent disease like the flu presents much more of a serious threat than diseases like AIDS. This threat is more palpable for people living on level 1, where access to basic healthcare is sparse and unreliable.  

An unprecedented financial crisis can also wreak havoc on the world, thanks to globalization. The collapse of a large financial institution can devastate economies and usher in global unrest. The last financial crisis was largely impossible to predict, and the lack of robust recovery from it has been due to the unnecessary complexity of the system. We haven’t done too much to simplify it and run the risk of a future collapse. 

Climate change is a reality that has been staring at us in the face for quite some time. Though there is no need to create a fear psychosis amongst the people by presenting the worst-case scenarios of the effects of climate change, we must take stock of the situation and foster a healthy environment to devise solutions to tackle it. Blaming countries on levels 1, 2, and 3, for emissions, is unfair. They deserve access to electricity just like the countries on level 4. Moreover, we have to focus on per capita emissions rather than country emissions, which indicates that the richest countries on level 4, are the most to blame for emissions that contribute to climate change. 

War is another challenge that we face, and the occurrence of two major wars along with numerous others in the last century has shown the devastation wars can bring. We need more intercultural exchanges to develop solidarity amongst the nations of the world and reduce the threat of wars. 

Another challenge is extreme poverty. Poverty brings with its a multitude of problems that lead to large-scale suffering. Extreme poverty is also synonymous with poor healthcare, disease outbreaks, and civil wars. Increased global prosperity has resulted in a dramatic drop in the numbers of extremely poor people. But, there are still about 800 million to go. We must keep working towards reducing and alleviating this malaise. 

  

Final Summary 

We hope you enjoyed this quid on Factfulness. Adopting a fact-based approach to life can give us a better understanding of the world we live in. While there are a lot of things which need to be improved or changed, as a whole, we have made remarkable progress in the last couple of centuries. A majority of people live in middle-income countries now, whereas just 200 years back, nearly 85% of the people were extremely poor. Civilizational progress has been far-reaching, and even those countries which many "westerners" feel are underdeveloped, have made progress by leaps and bounds. All in all, while things remain bad in many areas, they are still much better than what they used to be. 

Parting Note: 

The book is full of interesting data and anecdotes. With healthy visual charts and graphs, the book serves as an informative read, even though its purpose is not so much to inform about facts but to equip the reader with the tools to understand the world as it is.