Factfulness, or Book Zero
I have a love-hate relationship with the news. I grew up seeing my dad read multiple newspapers every weekend. It was a habit that I wanted for myself too. It seems responsible to be on top of current events. I never did get into it consistently though. The news appeared to be constantly disappointing. It served me heartbreaking headline after heartbreaking headline, especially in the recent years.
Tim Ferriss gave me an idea back then that it was okay to stop reading the news in the name of focus and mental health. He said he didn’t read any news because there was no purpose in keeping up to date just for the sake of being up to date; and when there’s something we absolutely should know, the information makes its way to us somehow anyway. I subscribed to that worldview for a while, a little relieved that Tim validated that. Then I subscribed to New York Times and only read that. It was foreign news, great writing, great drama, and it all seemed far-distanced from me, giving me a sense of safety. When my dad found out that I dropped local news altogether and depended only on one news source, he was incredulous at how reckless I was being. Like how can I live not knowing my own local news happening in my own country, and having just one perspective? When I tried to reason with him with but it breaks my heart I heard how ridiculous my excuse was, that just didn’t cut it.
Fast forward to around a year and a half ago, when I came across Factfulness by Hans Rosling.
Factfulness should be Book Zero — this should be required reading for everyone as early as possible. This should be taught in elementary schools. It is a book that teaches you how to best form the foundation for your worldview and gives you 10 simple tools for it. Worldview, or perspective, is extremely vital to one’s own sense of self. It is the lens through which one views reality and how one receives and processes information relating to external events. After reading it, I understood why Bill Gates bothered to gift a copy to all undergrad, masters, and postgrad graduates in the USA in 2018.
Here are my notes from the main tools from the book, a set of 10 general instincts that we tend to have that seriously distort our worldview and perspective; and a management technique for each. If I were to sum it all up in a tweet, it would be “We are wired to have overdramatic worldviews. It is in fact, not bad.”
1. The Gap Instinct
We tend to think the world is divided into two: developing countries and developed countries, first world and third world. Headlines usually talk about a gap between two groups of people, like rich countries and poor countries. Wrong! The reality is often not polarized at all. Usually the majority is positioned in the middle. We have to train ourselves to not divide the world in halves and to instead look for where the majority lies.
The book opens with a quiz that shows you how terribly mistaken you are about the world and tells you to drop using the terms “developed country” and “developing country”. Those terms are now outdated, not to mention “first world” and “third world”. The more accurate description is now income levels: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4. USA and the UK are Level 4. The Philippines is Level 2 (close to Level 3). But that doesn’t mean everyone in those countries are in the same level as their country. For instance, I and I’m sure you are Level 4 because we would each make at least $32 a day. But we live in a Level 2 country.
The vast majority of countries in the world are in Levels 2 and 3, aka, middle class. Mind-blowing.
2. The Negativity Instinct
We tend to look at the papers and see that 9 out of 10 articles are bad news, so we tend to conclude that the world is going down. This is not necessarily true. Information about bad news much more likely to reach us or to grab our attention than good news. When things are getting better gradually, we don’t hear about them. For example, child mortality rate, which speaks volumes about the quality of healthcare in a country, is 44% in 1800 but now, it has dramatically been reduced to less than 4%. The hunger rate in 1970 is 28%, now it’s just 11%. From what, zero — 80% of people in the world have electricity. Yes, including the poorest nations in Africa.
To manage this: expect bad news. It’s what sells. Keep in mind that cold hard stats are still the best indicators of how the world or our country is doing.
3. The Straight-Line Instinct
When faced with numbers that are on an increasing trend, like the world population, we tend to think that it will go on in a straight line forever and panic at the prospect of things like overpopulation. Wrong. For example, the Ebola numbers as they are starting. It did not go in a straight line for long. The world population for another. It is not just increasing — it will soon curve toward a flat line. Child births per woman are decreasing in general. Including the Philippines! As an aside, the lowering of child births per woman show that women are getting more education in general and having more access to contraceptives.
To manage this: remember that line curves come in different shapes.
4. The Fear Instinct
Bone-chilling news headlines are what stick in our minds. Fear is a useful instinct in that it showed our ancestors that there’s a presence of danger. Now though, this instinct distorts our view of the world too. For example, deaths from natural disasters seem greater now, to our minds, but are actually now 25% less than what it was 100 years ago, thanks to developments in systems and technologies. War deaths in 1942 are 2,013 per million people. In 2016, it’s just 12. Media in Level 4 countries tend to paint the picture that terrorism kills more people now in those countries but terrorism deaths in Level 4 countries are just 0.9% of the total terrorism deaths in the world over the past decade.
To manage this: calculate the risks. Assess the available data and don’t act on fear.
5. The Size Instinct
We tend to get things out of proportion. Think of the following percentages: people in the world having their basic needs met; children vaccinated; girls in primary school. It’s 80%, 88%, and 90%, respectively. You would have never guessed that from how the media’s headlines are these days. We think things are so much worse than they are and it makes our minds smaller.
To manage this: get things in proportion. Always compare numbers, look for the 80/20 in a list.
6. The Generalization Instinct
We tend to categorize and generalize all the time; again, an instinct that served our ancestors (like when determining what is edible or not in plants and herbs), but now tends to distort our worldview. We tend to jump to conclusions, divide the world into “us” and “them”. People up in Level 4 tend to lump Levels 1, 2, and 3 together into “poor” and they’re missing the point entirely. This amazing resource from Gapminder, founded by Hans Rosling and his kids, has this amazing tool called Dollar Street which visually compares how people live in each of the income levels. You see how each level is very different from the other. I was so blown away by this tool.
To manage this: question the categories, don’t settle for lumping things into convenient categories. Look for differences within groups and similarities across groups. Don’t just take “the majority” and leave it at that, ask for the percentage.
7. The Destiny Instinct
This is a very Pinoy instinct. It’s the idea that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people and countries. For example, the “bahala na” culture and Pinoys tending to assume that we’re all carefree and careless by nature, and so we won’t make it as far as Level 4 countries. But we are on the way there. Our macro stats are gradually improving. Slow change is still change. Please reflect on how your grandparents, your parents lived when they were children, and reflect on how you lived as a child, and how you all live now. I’m sure that there has been improvement. You may now be on Level 4 whereas your grandparents were on Level 3. All it takes is for the rest of our countrymen to reach Level 4 too over time and generations...
To manage this: look at stats and remember that slow change is still change.
8. The Single Perspective Instinct
I love Rosling’s starter to this chapter: “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.” It’s convenient to be able to rely on a single perspective, a single idea source. But we have to constantly test these sources and ideas and embrace contradictions and opposing views. It will give us a richer and a more true picture of the world.
For example, democracy. We of course think this is the best way to govern all countries. There is no other alternative. Controversially but surprisingly, however, 9 out of 10 countries with the fastest economic growth within 2012-2016 score low on democracy. Crazy, right? Importance on democracy then cannot be the single indicator of how progressive a country is.
To manage this: get a toolbox, not a hammer. In other words, try different ideas and perspectives, don’t try to hammer everything with a single perspective, and beware of simple ideas and simple solutions.
9. The Blame Instinct
We tend to find a simple reason for bad things. Like if things are bad now, we tend to blame the current administration or whoever the leader of the company is. Also, like right now we were blaming the media for painting inaccurate pictures. But the more likely suspects are institutions and systems. The media can’t be blamed if attention-grabbing stories are the ones that sell, or that our instincts cause us to take in news in a way that distorts our worldview. Finding a scapegoat (e.g. big pharma for making vaccines expensive) tends to block us from seeing the other institutional causes of what led us here.
To manage this: resist finding a scapegoat. It’s mostly about multiple interacting causes which we should try to understand for a more accurate worldview.
10. The Urgency Instinct
We always gets news items that tell us that we have to act now or never. But Rosling tells us to relax. It’s almost never true, never that urgent, not an either/or. For example, global warming. It’s real, alright, but it’s important to get the data first before doing anything drastic. What gets measured gets managed. We have to act smart above all. Where do the largest carbon emissions come from, how do we tell if it’s worsening or improving? Rosling looked for carbon emission data per country and found so little data available. Due to his work, Sweden now tracks greenhouse gasses quarterly and South Korea will be learning how to do the same (this was in 2016).
To manage this: take small steps. Insist on getting the data first and beware of calls for drastic action as this may do more harm than good without the necessary data.
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