Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling (PDF)

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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates“Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates”Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases.” – Former U.S. President Barack ObamaFactfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. 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. —“This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Hans Rosling is a phenomenal human being. He’s a Swedish physician and epidemiologist whom had worked in many poorest villages in the world – like in Mozambique, Zaire, and Tanzania – had taught and gave speeches in many more places around the world from his native Sweden to India to Canada to Iran to Vietnam, and also had worked with many UN agencies, influencing global elites from Melinda Gates, to Mark Zuckeberg, to Al Gore, to Fidel Castro, and the many Davos crowds along the way.He is one of the most qualified persons to teach about global health, and perhaps one of few people who have the right to be pessimistic about the world, considering what he had witnessed and experienced directly in the world. But yet, his life’s work and mission is the total opposite of that. In a world where the majority of news headlines are giving us the impression that the state of the world is getting worse by the day, Rosling appears with the counter perception with undisputed arguments: through data and charts.This book is the culmination of this mission. With a kind and worldly professor vibe, which is reflected in the relaxed tone of his writing (and the fun fact that he’s a proud sword swallower), he breaks down the paragraphs into bite size sub-chapters that makes the book easy to digest. And then with every argument he makes, he backs it up with the statistics and the charts that comes with it. And oh how he loves his charts. He has every imaginable charts there is in the world, from life expectancy, immunization, to plane crash deaths, legal slavery, to guitar per capita, new movies, even the projection of his grandson’s height.Moreover, Rosling created 4 income levels to make it easier to analyse the condition of countries over the world, with Level 1 to Level 4 progress. Level 1 is extreme poverty: $1 per day (roughly 1 billion people live like this today). Level 2: $4 a day (roughly 3 billion people live like this today). Level 3: $16 per day (roughly 2 billion people live like this today). Level 4: more than $64 a day (roughly 1 billion people live like this today).So, the state of the world is not getting worse, in fact if we look at the many charts in the book it is strikingly obvious that we’ve never had it better than today. For example, contrary to popular belief the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has almost halved in the past 20 years. In the year 1800 around 85% of humanity lived on Level 1, but just 20 years ago it was down to 29%, while today it is 9%. Global life expectancy has also grown from an average age of 30 years old in 1800, to 60 years in 1973, to 72 years as at the writing of the book in 2016-2017. Even the label developing and developed countries are technically wrong, since today 75% of people live in middle-income countries, or between Level 2 and Level 3. “Not poor, not rich, but somewhere in the middle and starting to live a reasonable life.”Rosling then teaches us how to read the data more closely. For example, we can measure the “temperature” of a society from the child mortality rate, because children are very fragile and there are so many things that can kill them. He reasoned, “[w]hen only 14 children die out of 1000 in Malaysia, this means that the other 986 survive. Their parents and their society manage to protect them from all the dangers that could have killed them: germs, starvation, violence, and so on. So this number 14 tells us that most families in Malaysia have enough food, their sewage systems don’t leak into their drinking water, they have good access to primary health care, and mothers can read and write. It doesn’t just tell us about the health of children. It measures the quality of the whole society.”Moreover, in a Daniel Kahneman-esque approach, Rosling also challenges our cognitive biases on seeing the world with such negative judgements. He explained “[i]n large part, it is because of our negativity instinct: our instinct to notice the bad more than the good. There are three things going on here: the misremembering of the past; selective reporting by journalists and activists; and the feeling that as long as things are bad it’s heartless to say they are getting better.”Particularly on addressing the role of the media on selective reporting, he made a good point on the unavailability of breaking news in the past: “When Europeans slaughtered indigenous peoples across America a few centuries ago, it didn’t make the news back in the old world. When central planning resulted in mass famine in rural China, millions starved to death while the youngsters in Europe waving communist red flags knew nothing about it. When in the past whole species or ecosystems were destroyed, no one realized or even cared. Alongside all the other improvements, our surveillance of suffering has improved tremendously. This improved reporting is itself a sign of human progress, but it creates the impression of the exact opposite.”And of course there’s the common adage that bad news sell more than good news. For instance, the media report on plane crashes, that made some people afraid of flying. In 2016 a total of 40 million commercial passenger flights landed safely at their destinations, with 10 ended in fatal accidents. But of course, the 10 that didn’t make it were the ones the media wrote about, the 0.000025% of the total.However, this is not saying that the true state of the world is all rosy and that the media is manipulating us all, this is not being optimistic for optimism’s sake. Instead, he acknowledged that everything is not fine, and that we should still be very concerned. “As long as there are plane crashes, preventable child deaths, endangered species, climate change deniers, male chauvinists, crazy dictators, toxic waste, journalists in prison, and girls not getting an education because of their gender, as long as any such terrible things exist, we cannot relax.”But, he elaborates, “it is just as ridiculous, and just as stressful, to look away from the progress that has been made.” So instead, he explain it in a simple analogy: we should see the world like we see a premature baby in incubator. Yes her health is critical and it’s bad, we should not relax and stop worrying. But the baby’s condition is improving day by day in the intensive care, so yes the situation is improving. It is both bad and better at the same time. In this light, his brilliant explanation and analysis on the reality of climate change and refugee crisis have completely changed the way I see these problems.In this sense, he labels himself with a word that he made up himself: a possibilist. “It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview.” True to his mission, he dedicate several chapters on teaching us to become a possibilist, including training us to refrain from reacting from URGENT news or message or sale or offer that prompt us to make quick (and rash and uncalculated) decisions NOW!Hans Rosling sadly passed away in 2017, 2 months before the book was published, making this book his last ever contribution to society. In fact, his last days were spent reading and editing the draft that would become this book. And towards the end of the book he provides 5 global risks that we should worry about, the 1st of which was global pandemic, which in 2016-2017 he amazingly described a scenario similar with Covid-19 that we are experiencing right now.Like many others, I first knew about this book because it is the book that Bill Gates gave away to all graduates in US college and universities in 2018. And after reading it, I get it. I understand why Gates specifically chose this book.

⭐“I didn’t see what I wanted to see. I saw what I was afraid of seeing. Critical thinking is always difficult abut it’s almost impossible when we are scared.”I heartily recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling and his co-authors Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. My bookclub picked it because the subtitle (ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think) sounded hopeful and we’re all hungry for hope. And I have to say, aside from all the ways Rosling shows how we misinterpret the world and how to combat our all too human instincts, reading it actually did have a wonderfully calming effect!Rosling outlines 10 basic instincts that plague our perceptions of the world: The Gap Instinct, the Negativity Instinct, the Straight Line instinct, the Fear instinct, the Size instinct, the Generalization instinct, the Destiny instinct, the Single Perspective instinct, the Blame instinct, and the Urgency instinct. I found myself guilty of almost all of them in very obvious ways, and probably the ones I didn’t recognize, I’m also playing out in some subconscious (to myself) way.“Stay open to new data, and be prepared to keep freshening up your knowledge.”I deeply appreciated being taught that there is no binary between “developed” and “developing” countries – rather a continuum from Level 1 to Level 4, each with its own set of challenges. It took the World Bank 17 years and 14 of Rosling’s talks to stop espousing this false binary, so maybe it’s not so shameful that it took me 45 years to stop doing it myself.Each chapter has a textbook-like ending with tips and tricks to deal with each of these biases. “Tips and tricks” is far too pat a way to describe the often simple, elegant, and profound advice he proffers. For example, his phrase “bad and better” is about being able to hold two conflicting ideas in your head: that the world is bad and that it’s getting better. So one could both acknowledge very dire problems as well as the progress and solutions that have happened and are to come. This is not to minimize the issues, but to understand how the world actually works in order to really change it. The benefits to this approach are: 1) be able to see the world or a particular problem more accurately and complexly, 2) devise and/or maintain effective multi-player multi-pronged solutions, and 3) act from a position of knowledge and power and hope rather than one of despair and stress.That last bit alone was validation enough for me. We live in a time that feels overwhelming and hopeless at times, and it was an enormous relief to be able to acknowledge our very real accomplishments and progress, as well as the proposition that some of what we’re doing is working – perhaps too slowly for our liking, but it’s working.For example, we’ve achieved enormous success in increasing child survival and almost all of it has been 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.”That last underpins Rosling’s oft-repeated mantra of education and contraceptives as part of the solution to eradicate poverty, curb population growth, and give people better lives. He calls eradicating extreme poverty a moral imperative and I can’t think of much better goals.“We should be teaching our children humility and curiosity.”Another example of progress referred to our disaster prevention measures and other modern indicators and technologies. Because of these, the number of deaths from acts of nature is now just 25% of what it was 100 years ago. Keep in mind that during that same time, our population increased by 5 billion people, so the drop in deaths per capita is even more astonishing: just 6% of what it was 100 years ago.Bangladesh comes up several times in the book, and not as a basket case as is often the case in the news, but as an example of inspirational progress. For example, after far too many devastating floods and cyclones and ensuing famines, the Bangladeshi government installed a country-wide digital surveillance system connected to a freely available flood-monitoring website. Just 15 years ago, no country in the world had such an advanced system. It has also improved its economic position drastically, going from a level 1 country (one marked by extreme poverty) to level 2 in just 4 decades.“Insist on a full range of scenarios.”I found myself giving the most pushback in the chapter that tackled environmental concerns, which Rosling readily acknowledges at the outset of the chapter as one of the most pressing issues humans face. Ok, so the total wild populations of tigers, giant pandas, and black rhinos have all increased over the past years. Is that a reason to rest on our laurels? Not that Rosling counsels any resting – on the contrary, his life is testament to an almost maniacal commitment to help the world’s young and poor and helpless. But I kept thinking: everything is horrible and our wildlife and seas are dying – we have to do something drastic now! Ironically, this was also the chapter about the urgency instinct, and how the now-or-never/either-or way of thinking is probably the wrong approach. Touché, Dr. Rosling.I took almost 9 pages of notes while reading Factfulness, and it almost felt like taking a (great) course. I wish I had had the chance to see Rosling talk in person but there are apparently dozens of TEDtalks and other lectures he’s given, online (sadly, he passed away just before the book came out). And I’m glad the waiting list at the library was so long that I ended up buying the book, because it’s one I will reread and quote and learn from for a long time to come.Factfulness was a breeze to read, written in a highly engaging style, and chockfull of personal anecdotes, statistical details, and global trends. I hope everyone reads it and feels charged and ready to continue changing the world for the better.“Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.”

⭐I just finished this book yesterday and to be honest, I have mixed feelings of what this book talks about.The book literally begins with a tone of “Why I am right and everyone is wrong” – because I gave simple questions to a lot of people and they all got it wrong. Well, people got it wrong because they have been conditioned to it, it’s the failure of our education and society in general, nothing wrong with that. The whole premise of the book is that we need to open up our eyes to the wide array of positive changes that are taking place in the world, and the world is getting better at most of the metrics be it child mortality, per capita income, healthcare, deaths to due to diseases, children being vaccinated, literacy levels, gender equality and what not. On the face of it, yes, mostly the world is getting better and it can be proved with data and statistics.What did I like about the book?1. Rosling tells you to believe that world is getting better (and he proves so with the use of data), and at the same time keep an eye out for the bad things (because they need to be improved too). I think this is a realistic world view, where you celebrate the progress and keep working on improving the things that need attention.2. Every statement is supported by facts, figures, charts and a lot of data (simple to understand).3. The book basically imbibes a more realistic (if positive is too strong a word here) outlook towards the world.4. You learn to look at data cautiously, trying to overcome your bias and instincts.5. You learn to look at media publications, news etc with a pinch of salt and would know better than they prefer showing ‘bad’ stuff rather than ‘good’ stuff. The media blows everything out of proportion and unfortunately, most people believe it.6. Finally, you learn about your 10 instincts and would be more aware of them whenever you hear any news or information that talks about how bad the world has become. You learn to look at things from multiple perspectives, suppress these instincts, and eventually be more rational.What I did not like about the book?1. The book is based on figures and statistics to prove the point. But as it’s true with statistics, there’s more to it than what meets the eye. For example, Rosling says there’s no such thing as a ‘Developed’ and ‘Developing’ country anymore, a majority of the countries are now ‘Middle Income’ countries. He’s right, no doubt about that. But what makes up a ‘Middle Income’ country. If you make more than $2 a day, you are in the middle-income group. But does that ensure a good living? What is the meaning of $2 in the context of living standards? Isn’t this progress so slow that many generations will not even witness the progress?2. Rosling has used averages to convey the point of progress while cautioning the user against them at the same time. As compared to maybe a few decades ago, there are only 1 Billion people living at Level 1 (Extreme Poverty) and trends show you that this number has decreased drastically. But if you look at it in absolute terms, we are talking about 1 Billion people on this planet who don’t get enough food to eat on a daily basis! That’s a huge number.3. Rosling has underplayed suffering and lack of resources, and covered it with the statistically correct ‘progress’. It’s like saying, so what if your food lacks nutrition and variety, at least you’re getting better than what you were getting a decade back. It’s funny really and seems such a farce at times. Definitely, he’s not wrong when he says progress has happened, but the meaning of ‘progress’ would differ for different people. His overall thesis, that we live in a much better world than we imagine, is comforting, but “better” might still be “terrible” in some cases.Let’s look at the book summary now! Rosling talks about our ten ‘Dramatic Instincts’ (and 10 reasons why we are wrong about the world). Here they are –1. The Gap Instinct – We tend to divide the things into 2 distinct groups and imagine a gap between them. To control gap instinct, look for the majority. Beware of the averages, if you look at the spread, the majority will overlap. Beware comparisons of extremes (Media loves to do it).2. The Negativity Instinct – We tend to instinctively notice the bad more than the good. We need to learn to acknowledge the fact that things can be both ‘better’ and ‘bad’ at the same time. Example, education levels have improved over time, but still, 10% of the children don’t get any education, that’s bad. We also need to know that good news is never reported, media would hype the bad stuff always. Subsequently, gradual improvement isn’t reported either. Countries, government, media often try to glorify the past, so we need to be beware of these rosy pasts.3. The Straight Line Instinct – When we see a line going up steadily, we tend to assume the line will continue to go up in the foreseeable future. To control this instinct, remember that curves come in different shapes. Finally, don’t assume straight lines if data doesn’t show it.4. The Fear Instinct – We tend to perceive the world to be scarier than it really is. We overestimate the risks associated with violence, captivity, contamination etc. The world seems scarier because what you hear has been carefully selected to be told. Remember, Risk = Danger x Exposure, and act accordingly. Make decisions only when you’re calm, not when you are afraid.5. The Size Instinct – We tend to see things out of proportion, over-estimating the importance of a single event/person that’s visible to us, and the scale of an issue based on a standalone number. A lonely number may seem impressive in isolation, but can be trivial in comparison to something else. Hence, always look for comparisons. Use the 80/20 rule. When comparing countries, look for rates per person.6. The Generalization Instinct – We tend to wrongly assume that everything or everyone in a category is similar. Hence, we must look for differences within a group, look for similarities across groups and look for differences across groups. We should beware of the term ‘Majority’ – it can mean 51% or 99% or anything in between. Beware of vivid images, which are easier to recall but can be exceptions than the general norm.7. The Destiny Instinct – We tend to assume that the destinies of people, cultures, countries etc. are predetermined by certain factors, and such factors are fixed and unchanging, i.e. their destinies are fixed. To control this, we must keep track of gradual changes and improvements. We should update our knowledge on different subjects, and look for examples of cultural changes.8. The Single Perspective Instinct – We tend to focus on single causes or solutions, which are easier to grasp and make our problems seem easier to solve. It is better to look at problems from multiple perspectives. To control this, always test your ideas and allow people to find weaknesses. Don’t claim to be an expert at all times, be humble about your limited expertise in different areas.9. The Blame Instinct – When something goes wrong, we instinctively blame it on someone or something. To control this, resist finding a scapegoat. Look for causes, not villains. Finally, look for systems and processes, not heroes.10. The Urgency Instinct – We tend to rush into a problem or opportunity for fear that there’s no time and we may be too late. To control this, take small steps. Always insist on data rather than making hunch based hasty decisions. Always be aware of the side effects of your hasty decision to avoid making the same.Favorite Quotes from the Book:- “The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone.”- “Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you like to understand reality.”- “Forming your worldview by relying on the media would be like forming your view about me by looking only at a picture of my foot. Sure, my foot is part of me, but it’s a pretty ugly part. I have better parts.”To sum up, Factfulness is a good book that explains how our instincts sometimes distort our understanding of our world and why it’s crucial to learn established facts that are now reliably and readily available. Our instincts might help in certain situations, but in others, critical thinking beyond emotions is necessary. However, we must learn to look beyond the displayed ‘progress’ also, because even lesser suffering can mean ‘progress’ statistically.

⭐I like the author a lot, but I think the content could fit into a 15 min TED talk. Oh, that’s right, it did (search his name on TED’s website). It’s worth 15 mins for sure – but the content in the book just did not expand enough to justify an actual book (seems there was some monetisation going on here – but I suppose everyone has the right to make money from their fame, posthumously, in his case – sadly). Unfortunately, I thought the author also fell foul of his own “lessons of what not to do” on several occassions – making “assumptions” without full investigation, or not defining things properly, etc. (He sets the bar high, to be fair). Example – he asks the reader to guess what % of the world population lives in extreme poverty (and he points out most people are guilty of using data from 20-30 years ago), but then he basically uses a definition of poverty from 20-30 years ago – without considering that the definition might also have progressed in the “common” sense of the word. So he should have been more specific about his definition before asking the question.

⭐Most of you would have either seen the late Hans Rosling’s TED talks or read about Bill Gates praising him on his blog. The subtitle of the book – 10 reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think – stays true to his TED talk persona. He is a medical doctor who brilliantly uses statistics and visuals to show us how most of us are ignorant about the world, and how things are a lot better than we think and improving even faster.However, the book format allows him to move way beyond this and Factfulness is by far the best book about developing sound real-world thinking and practical judgment that I have ever read. It ranks way up there on this hard-to-teach topic alongside studying the lives and words of people like Lee Kuan Yew, Charlie Munger and Charles Darwin.The book entertainingly spans evidence-based reasoning, statistical thinking (as opposed to its more common cousin – anecdotal outrage), psychological cognitive biases, self-awareness, looking through media biases (usually towards sensationalist, fear-mongering bad news) and thinking through effective, actionable solutions to material real-world problems including non-intuitive, indirect ones. Rosling is unusual in his ability to abstract out a range of conceptual tools that we can use across situations, while using examples from his experience to keep such concepts relatable and grounded.Rosling’s day job was as a medical doctor specialising in controlling epidemics around the world. He has witnessed gut-wrenching tragedy first-hand. However, rather than despair or be guided by emotions, he objectively looks for the most effective solutions that can help do most good even if it worsens the situation immediately confronting him. As an illustration, the most effective tool to limit high population growth in poor countries isn’t family planning propaganda but better sanitation (infant mortality is disproportionately caused by contamination of water with sewage and reducing this automatically causes parents to try for fewer children). This then has spillover benefits for family health, women’s empowerment and fewer children getting more attention and resources, making it far more likely that the family will escape from abject poverty over a generation.Rosling is a nuanced thinker, able to convey seemingly contradictory thoughts in a way that allows the reader to navigate a grey, messy world rather than a neat, binary one popularised by academics and journalists. As an illustration, he paints a nuanced picture of how things can be both bad and better at the same time. Often, activists are so outraged by things being bad (all we have to do in a place like India is to look around) that they deny any notion that things are actually getting better in many ways. In reality, acknowledging, appreciating and understanding how things are getting better is the way to fix what is still clearly bad.This is the kind of book that all of us should read, as a great starting point towards being lesser idiots in whatever we have set out to do.

⭐Like many people I have lived my whole life feeling guilty and deeply depressed about the terrible state of the world -so much so that I have often felt like there was no point in doing anything about it. This book changes everything because it puts all that bad news (which we are constantly inundated with) into fact-based context. The data that is presented in this fascinating and entertaining book challenges just about everything I believed about the world we live in without in any way minimising the changes that still need to be made. This makes me feel not only more positive and hopeful about state of humanity but also that it is worth me making an effort to contribute to the incredible improvements that are taking place daily on the planet, world wide – and that my participation could actually make a difference.Truly inspirational and life affirming – read it now!

⭐A perfect demonstration of how to lie with statistics.It is dangerous to put a book out there with dubious statistics, deceiving people who cannot see through the figures. It is avoiding actual figures regarding global warming, quality of life and biodiversity.

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