Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think By Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund Flatiron Books, 2018

Like many people, I first heard about Hans Rosling via his popular TED talk, where he showed evidence the world is getting better by using animated bubble charts. Factfulness — which Bill Gates called one of the most important books he’s ever read — is like a paper-based version of that presentation: It does, indeed, use data to explain how things are getting better. But it does more than that: It also explains why we find that so hard to believe.

The book divided into ten chapters corresponding to biases or “instincts” that delude us:

  1. The Gap Instinct: Our tendency towards polarizing what we see.

  2. The Negativity Instinct: Our tendency to spread bad news over good news. (I.e., “Good news is not news.”)

  3. The Straight Line Instinct: Our tendency to project future trends based on current trends.

  4. The Fear Instinct: Our (deeply hard-wired) tendency to pay more attention to frightening things.

  5. The Size Instinct: Out tendency to gravitate towards impressively large or small numbers, losing our sense of proportion.

  6. The Generalization Instinct: Our tendency to generalize and categorize data.

  7. The Destiny Instinct: Our tendency to not perceive change when it happens slowly and gradually.

  8. The Single Perspective Instinct: Our tendency to see things only from our angle.

  9. The Blame Instinct: Our tendency to find scapegoats to blame for the way things are.

  10. The Urgency Instinct: Our tendency to react to changing conditions by intervening immediately.

Looking at data objectively, it’s hard not to see how humanity has made enormous progress. But you wouldn’t know this if you look at the news or interact with others in social media. This is in part because most people argue from a perspective that is distorted by these “instincts.” This book shows you how to overcome these biases so you can understand things more objectively. It’s not a dose of optimism, but a dose of possibilism, a word Rosling coined (and which I’ve written about before.)

Hans Rosling died of pancreatic cancer before finishing the Factfulness. His collaborators — his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna — conclude the book with a note regarding the impact he hoped it would have: to help us work towards a fact-based worldview. Given the power and outreach of our technologies, we need it more than ever. This book is an important contribution in that direction.

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