Library:Factfulness
| Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think | |
|---|---|
| Author | Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling & Anna Rosling Rönnlund |
| First published | 2018 |
| ISBN | — |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Society, Identity & Demographics Health & Medicine |
| Tactics | Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion |
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think is a 2018 book by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling & Anna Rosling Rönnlund.
Summary
Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician and professor of international health famous for his animated data lectures, wrote this book with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund, co-founders of the Gapminder Foundation. Rosling died in 2017, before it was published.
The book opens with a quiz about global trends in poverty, health and education. Most people, including experts, score worse than chance, because they assume the world is worse than it is.
Key points
- Ten instincts. The authors identify instincts that distort our view, including the gap instinct (seeing the world as "us" and "them"), the negativity instinct and the straight-line instinct.
- Data over drama. They show that extreme poverty, child mortality and many other measures have improved dramatically over decades.
- Not optimism. Rosling called himself a "possibilist": things can be bad and getting better at the same time.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
Factfulness shows how a steady diet of dramatic news distorts public understanding of basic facts. It is a counterweight to claims built on outdated or cherry-picked statistics.