When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

Takeaways

Chapter One: The Gap Instinct

• The Gap Instinct is…
  • irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap—a huge chasm of injustice—in between Link
• This section of the book challenges our tendencies to use two groups to make broad generalizations about the world. Moreover, we tend to use static, outdated data and fail to challenge results because we assume things to do not.
• The world makeover refers to tendency from 1965 for countries where families had many children also had many child deaths, and the converse fewer child leads to fewer child deaths.
• However, comparing results from 1965 to 2017, we see an overall decrease in infant mortality resulting previously established cohorts from 1965 to be non-existent. Link
• We now know that people believe that life in low-income countries is much worse than it actually is. Link

  Of the world population, what percentage lives in lowincome countries? The majority suggested the answer was 50 percent or more. The average guess was 59 percent. The real figure is 9 percent. Link

human beings have a strong dramatic instinct toward binary thinking Link

• The gap instinct makes us imagine division where there is just a smooth range, difference where there is convergence, and conflict where there is Link
• We are naturally drawn to extreme examples, and they are easy to recall Link
• Statistics are often used in dramatic ways for political purposes, but it’s important that they also help us navigate reality. Link
• The thing known as poverty in your country is different from “extreme poverty.” It’s “relative poverty.” In the United States, for example, people are classified as below the poverty line even if they live on Level 3. Link
• Your most important challenge in developing a fact-based worldview is to realize that most of your firsthand experiences are from Level 4; and that your secondhand experiences are filtered through the mass media, which loves nonrepresentative extraordinary events and shuns normality. Link [!critical

Chapter Two: The Negativity Instinct

• negativity instinct: our tendency to notice the bad more than the good. Link

  a good general principle with statistics: be careful jumping to any conclusions if the differences are smaller than say, roughly, 10 percent. Link

• It’s harder to know about the good things: billions of improvements that are never reported. Link
• it is extremely easy for humans to forget how things really did “used to be.” Link
• No wonder we get an illusion of constant deterioration. The news constantly alerts us to bad events in the present. Link
• People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn’t know about. That makes me angry. I’m not an optimist. That makes me sound naïve. I’m a very serious “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. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful. Link
• Factfulness is … recognizing when we get negative news, and remembering that information about bad events is much more likely to reach us. Link
  • Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g., better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.
  • Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.
  • Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.
  • More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.
  • Beware of rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories. Link

    Chapter Three: The Straight Line Instinct

• our straight line intuition is not always a reliable guide in modern life. Link
• UN experts are pretty sure it will keep slowing down over the next few decades. They think the curve will flatten out at somewhere between 10 and 12 billion people by the end of the century. Link
• On average four out of six children died before becoming parents themselves, leaving just two surviving children to parent the next generation. There was a balance. It wasn’t because humans lived in balance with nature. Humans died in balance with nature. It was utterly brutal and tragic. Link
• “Saving poor children just increases the population” sounds correct, but the opposite is true. Delaying the escape from extreme poverty just increases the population. Link
• The best way of controlling the instinct to always see straight lines—whether in relation to population growth or in other situations—is simply to remember that curves naturally come in lots of different shapes. Link
• Factfulness is … recognizing the assumption that a line will just continue straight, and remembering that such lines are rare in reality.
  • To control the straight line instinct, remember that curves come in different shapes.
  • Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to. Link

    Chapter Four: The Fear Instinct

• Factfulness is … recognizing when frightening things get our attention, and remembering that these are not necessarily the most risky. Our natural fears of violence, captivity, and contamination make us systematically overestimate these risks.
• To control the fear instinct, calculate the risks.
  • The scary world: fear vs. reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected—by your own attention filter or by the media—precisely because it is scary.
  • Risk = danger × exposure. The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it? And how much are you exposed to it?
  • Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided. Link

    Chapter Five: The Size Instinct

• “In the deepest poverty you should never do anything perfectly. If you do you are stealing resources from where they can be better used.” Link
• The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Link
• The size instinct directs our limited attention and resources toward those individual instances or identifiable victims, those concrete things right in front of our eyes. Link
• To avoid getting things out of proportion you need only two magic tools: comparing and dividing. Link
• The most important thing you can do to avoid misjudging something’s importance is to avoid lonely numbers. Link
• Factfulness is … recognizing when a lonely number seems impressive (small or large), and remembering that you could get the opposite impression if it were compared with or divided by some other relevant number. - To control the size instinct, get things in proportion.
  • Compare. Big numbers always look big. Single numbers on their own are misleading and should make you suspicious. Always look for comparisons. Ideally, divide by something.
  • 80/20. Have you been given a long list? Look for the few largest items and deal with those first. They are quite likely more important than all the others put together.
  • Divide. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions. Link

    Chapter Six: The Generalization Instinct

• Everyone automatically categorizes and generalizes all the time. Unconsciously. It is not a question of being prejudiced or enlightened. Categories are absolutely necessary for us to function. They give structure to our thoughts. Imagine if we saw every item and every scenario as truly unique—we would not even have a language to describe the world around us. Link

  The gap instinct divides the world into “us” and “them,” and the generalization instinct makes “us” think of “them” as all the same. Link

• When many people become aware of a problematic generalization it is called a stereotype. Link
• If you suffer from the misconception that most of the world is still too poor to buy anything at all, you risk missing out on the biggest economic opportunity in world history while you use your marketing spend to push special “yoga” pads to wealthy hipsters in the biggest cities in Europe. Link

• When visiting reality in other countries, and not just the backpacker cafés, you realize that generalizing from what is normal in your home environment can be useless or even dangerous. Link

• How to Control the Generalization Instinct
  • Find Better Categories
  • Question Your Categories
  • Look for Differences Within Groups and Similarities Across Groups
  • Beware of “The Majority”
  • Beware of Exceptional Examples
  • Assume You Are Not “Normal” and Other People Are Not Idiots
  • Beware of Generalizing from One Group to Another
• Factfulness is … recognizing when a category is being used in an explanation, and remembering that categories can be misleading. We can’t stop generalization and we shouldn’t even try. What we should try to do is to avoid generalizing incorrectly.
• To control the generalization instinct, question your categories.
  • Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories. And … • Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant. But also … • Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g., you and other people living on Level 4 or unconscious soldiers) applies for another (e.g., people not living on Level 4 or sleeping babies).
  • Beware of “the majority.” The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between.
  • Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.
  • Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think, In what way is this a smart solution? Link

    Chapter Seven: The Destiny Instinct

• The destiny instinct is the idea that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions, or cultures. Link

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

• Factfulness is … recognizing that many things (including people, countries, religions, and cultures) appear to be constant just because the change is happening slowly, and remembering that even small, slow changes gradually add up to big changes.
• To control the destiny instinct, remember slow change is still change.
  • Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades.
  • Update your knowledge. Some knowledge goes out of date quickly. Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.
  • Talk to Grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparents’ values and how they differ from yours.
  • Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s. Link

    Chapter Eight: The Single Perspective Instinct

• Why governments should not be mistaken for nails and why shoes and bricks sometimes tell you more than numbers. Link
• I love data only when it helps me to understand the reality behind the numbers, i.e., people’s lives. Link
• Numbers Are Not the Single Solution Link
• Medicine Is Not the Single Solution Link
• Factfulness is … recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions.
• To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer.
  • Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses.
  • Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others.
  • Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.
  • Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.
  • Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise. Solve problems on a case-by-case basis. Link

    Chapter Nine: The Blame Instinct

• The blame instinct is the instinct to find a clear, simple reason for why something bad has happened. Link
• Factfulness is … recognizing when a scapegoat is being used and remembering that blaming an individual often steals the focus from other possible explanations and blocks our ability to prevent similar problems in the future.
• To control the blame instinct, resist finding a scapegoat.
  • Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.
  • Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit. Link

    Chapter Ten: The Urgency Instinct

• The urgency instinct makes us want to take immediate action in the face of a perceived imminent danger. Link
• Factfulness is … recognizing when a decision feels urgent and remembering that it rarely is.
• To control the urgency instinct, take small steps.
  • Take a breath. When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down. Ask for more time and more information. It’s rarely now or never and it’s rarely either/or.
  • Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful.
  • Beware of fortune-tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before.
  • Be wary of drastic action. Ask what the side effects will be. Ask how the idea has been tested. Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluation of their impact, are less dramatic but usually more effective. Link