Factfulness

Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview.

Factfulness is one book I would recommend to anyone who wants to have a clear perspective about the world based on facts. It was written by Hans Rosling; a medical doctor, professor of international health and a public educator. I recently found this TED video; and interesting one which will help you know him better: The best stats you’ve ever seen. The book is a compilation of his years of research and experience, and is co-written by his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling. I heard about it first when Bill Gates mentioned this book in his blog. He explains how it helped him not to talk about ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries.

We live with misconceptions about the current state of the world. We hear the bad side of everything everyday and we think the world is slowly deteriorating. This over-dramatic view is what Hans Rosling demystifies in Factfulness. He presents why and how we are wrong through a simple quiz and explanations. It doesn’t end there. He further dives into what causes these distorted views, how to look out for the warning signs, and how to avoid them.

He describes ten instincts, in ten chapters, which are responsible for this. Although these one line explanations is nothing compared to the chapters in the book, if you do not like spoilers, you can skip this part.

1. The gap instinct: the natural tendency to divide everything incorrectly into two groups
2. The negativity instinct: which always makes us see the negative face than the positive one
3. The straight line instinct: the assumption that a straight line will always continue like the same in the future when we look at graphs
4. The fear instinct: frightening things that get in our way and blocks rational thinking
5. The size instinct: when lonely numbers are presented to us, we wrongly assume the severity of the issue
6. The generalisation instinct: which makes us think something that works for someone, works for others too
7. The destiny instinct: when people think something will never change because they don’t observe gradual progress
8. The single perspective instinct: the problem of a single perspective limiting our imagination
9. The blame instinct: when we find comfort in pointing fingers rather than finding the root cause
10. The urgency instinct: which makes us act fast without thinking, by creating a sense of unnecessary urgency

He presents every one of these with case studies and beautiful bubble charts. All the facts are backed by data, which are compiled and verified by international organisations. Also, the author is not afraid to admit how he had these instincts in the past, some of which are quintessential and resulted in terrifying repercussions.

The chapters are clear, concise and well structured with explanations and data. There was never a dull moment reading this book, and I enjoyed it all of it! I can count the non-fictions I loved from cover to cover on the fingers (The last one was Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh)

“The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone.”  – Hans Rosling

This book was an eye-opener for me. Also, this is not about optimism. The author himself says he is not an optimist, but a ‘possibiist’; someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. It doesn’t say the world is good. It says the world is both good and bad; they coexist together. The learnings from the book can be applied in about everything in our daily life.