Factfulness

“You might have seen this before. The line on the bottom looks longer than the line on the top. You know it isn’t, but even if you already know, even if you measure the lines yourself and confirm that they are the same, you keep seeing them as different lengths.

My glasses have a custom lens to correct for my personal sight problem. But when I look at this optical illusion, I still misinterpret what I see, just like everyone else. This is because illusions don’t happen in our eyes, they happen in our brains. They are systematic misinterpretations, unrelated to individual sight problems. Knowing that most people are deluded means you don’t need to be embarrassed. Instead you can be curious: how does the illusion work?”

This passage appears after Rosling displays an optical illusion of two lines that look like they are of different lengths but are, in fact, the same. The tendency for people to think the lines are different shows how an overdramatic worldview is a universal problem based on shared thought processes across the human race. It is not the product of a certain culture, country, race, gender, or other culture-made divide. Our brains are easily tricked, allowing the dramatic instincts to overwhelm us.

“The world fits into two boxes. And these are exactly the two boxes that the student in the third row had imagined. This picture clearly shows a world divided into two groups, with a gap in the middle. How nice. What a simple world to understand! So what’s the big deal? Why is it so wrong to label countries as ‘developed’ and ‘developing’? Why did I give my student who referred to ‘us and them’ such a hard time?

Because this picture shows the world in 1965! When I was a young man. That’s the problem. Would you use a map from 1965 to navigate around your country? Would you be happy if your doctor was using cutting-edge research from 1965 to suggest your diagnosis and treatment?” 

Here, Rosling introduces the outdated worldview that is so common, 20 years after he initially discovered the disparity in one of his classes. He uses the questions about outdated maps and medical equipment to illustrate the pitfalls of an outdated worldview. We would not use inaccurate maps to navigate and would be appalled by our doctors using equipment or treatments from 30 years ago. Yet, this outdated worldview persists on Level 4, implying that people on Level 4 are uncomfortable with outdated systems only when it directly affects them; thus, they don’t seek to update their knowledge. This passage also introduces the problem of thinking in terms of “us” and “them.” Such terms promote a divided world.

“How do you like your bath water? Ice cold or steam hot? Of course, those are not the only alternatives. You can also have your water freezing, tepid, scalding, or anything in between. Many options, along a range.” 

This passage shows how people don’t have to think in terms of gaps but often do. Water temperature can be adjusted to fit any person’s individual preference, whether through electrically heated pipes or over an open fire. Choice of water temperature has been an option for centuries, showing that people are capable of thinking in ranges; yet, this kind of thinking is not applied to the greater world because the option of a range of income is not sitting before us. The world was once divided into rich countries and poor countries, and the destiny instinct tells us this divide can’t change. We need only to look toward selecting water temperature to overcome the destiny instinct in terms of income gaps.

“There’s a dip in the global life expectancy curve in 1960 because 15 to 40 million people—nobody knows the exact number—starved to death that year in China, in what was probably the world’s largest ever man-made famine.

The Chinese harvest in 1960 was smaller than planned because of a bad season combined with poor governmental advice about how to grow crops more effectively. The local governments didn’t want to show bad results, so they took all the food and sent it to the central government. There was no food left. One year later the shocked inspectors were delivering eyewitness reports of cannibalism and dead bodies along roads. The government denied that its central planning had failed, and the catastrophe was kept secret by the Chinese government for 36 years.” 

This passage from Chapter 2 demonstrates the negativity instinct. The cover-up of famine by the Chinese government proves that negativity is manmade. By redirecting food and leaving the greater population to resort to drastic measures, the government allowed negative images of terrible living conditions to be displayed across the globe. Rosling uses this example to assert that accuracy is key when seeking information. Before the famine was made public knowledge, there was no good explanation for a sudden, isolated drop in global life expectancy. Once information became available, the exceptional circumstance of manmade famine makes it clear 1960 is an outlier on the life expectancy data spread. This passage also shows how a single data point can influence an average. Though it’s only one year among many where life expectancy continues to increase, 1960 draws down the average and skews the data.

“There’s something else going on as well. What are people really thinking when they say the world is getting worse? My guess is they are not thinking. They are feeling. If you still feel uncomfortable agreeing that the world is getting better, even after I have shown you all this beautiful data, my guess is that it’s because you know that huge problems still remain. My guess is you feel that me saying that the world is getting better is like me telling you that everything is fine, or that you should look away from these problems and pretend they don’t exist: and that feels ridiculous, and stressful.” 

Throughout Factfulness, Rosling demonstrates how we must change our thoughts to achieve a fact-based, rather than an opinion-based, worldview. Here, he equates thinking to a factful worldview and feeling to a dramatic worldview. Emotions cause us to have big, knee-jerk reactions. A lack of thinking and an increase in reactions contribute to stress. If people thought before reacting, they would be calmer and able to approach problems from a place of knowledge, rather than fear.

“These fears are still constructive for people on Levels 1 and 2. For example, it is practical, on Levels 1 and 2, to be afraid of snakes. Sixty thousand people are killed by snakes every year. Better to jump one too many times when you see a stick. Whatever you do, don’t get bitten. There’s no hospital nearby and if there is you can’t afford it. […] On Levels 3 and 4, where life is less physically demanding and people can afford to protect themselves against nature, these biological memories probably cause more harm than good. On Level 4, for sure the fears that evolved to protect us are now doing us harm. A small minority—3 percent—of the population on Level 4 suffers from a phobia so strong it hinders their daily life. For the vast majority of us not blocked by phobias, the fear instinct harms us by distorting our worldview.” 

Rosling asserts that dramatic instincts served humans better when we were a hunter-gatherer society. This passage shows how the fear instinct can be helpful or harmful in today’s world depending on income. Evolutionary fears on Levels 1 and 2 make our instincts both practical and necessary. On Levels 3 and 4, however, evolutionary dangers are less common, but the fear instinct is still active. Fear needs an outlet and will find things for us to be afraid of, which causes phobias, depression, anxiety, and other types of mental illnesses based on fear.

“I don’t think so. Not if you function like me. Because when that camera pans to bodies of dead children being pulled out of the debris, my intellectual capacity is blocked by fear and sorrow. At that moment, no line chart in the world can influence my feelings, no facts can comfort me. Claiming in that moment that things are getting better would be to trivialize the immense suffering of those victims and their families. It would be absolutely unethical. In these situations we must forget the big picture and do everything we can to help.” 

This passage comes after Rosling describes the images shown on the news on Level 4 following a massive event, such as a natural disaster. When presented with strong pictures of death or suffering, our instincts take over. This tendency is natural and even helpful under times of great stress. When disaster strikes, there isn’t time to think critically, and action must be taken. Equally important, though, is to resume critical thinking once the disaster has passed. Our instincts can help, but they should not be relied upon.

“In a devastating example of critical thinking gone bad, highly educated, deeply caring parents avoid the vaccinations that would protect their children from killer diseases. I love critical thinking and I admire skepticism, but only within a framework that respects the evidence. So if you are skeptical about the measles vaccination, I ask you to do two things. First, make sure you know what it looks like when a child dies from measles. Most children who catch measles recover, but there is still no cure and even with the best modern medicine, one or two in every thousand will die of it. Second, ask yourself, ‘What kind of evidence would convince me to change my mind?’ If the answer is ‘no evidence could ever change my mind about vaccination,’ then you are putting yourself outside evidence-based rationality, outside the very critical thinking that first brought you to this point. In that case, to be consistent in your skepticism about science, next time you have an operation please ask your surgeon not to bother washing her hands.” 

Throughout Factfulness, Rosling emphasizes the importance of fact-based critical thinking. This passage shows the importance of everything in moderation. Too much critical thinking can lead us to find problems where there are none. Rosling also stresses how we should approach information with a skeptical eye and not just believe everything we see. Again, moderation must be practiced. This passage shows the problem of overgeneralizing skepticism. Fear leads us to lump things together into either “bad” or “good,” which can harm us more than it helps.

“In the United States, the risk that your loved one will be killed by a drunk person is nearly 50 times higher than the risk he or she will be killed by a terrorist. […] One week after September 11, 2001, according to Gallup, 51 percent of the US public felt worried that a family member would become a victim of terrorism. Fourteen years later, the figure was the same: 51 percent. People are almost as scared today as they were the week after the Twin Towers came down.” 

This passage illustrates how fear distorts our view of danger. Terrorist attacks are flashier and get more media coverage than alcohol-related deaths. Even though alcohol-related deaths are more common, people fear terrorism more and do so consistently. Time does not dull fear, even when there is a definitive lack of threat related to that fear.

“The wars with China had lasted, on and off, for 2,000 years. The French occupation had lasted 200 years. The ‘Resistance War Against America’ took only 20 years. The sizes of the monuments put things in perfect proportion. It was only by comparing them that I could understand the relative insignificance of ‘the Vietnam War’ to the people who now live in Vietnam.” 

Here, Rosling shows two key concepts of factfulness: the perspective of size and how different people emphasize different things. Preceding this paragraph, Rosling describes how he saw three monuments in Vietnam, each constructed to commemorate a war. The monument for the war with China was the largest, followed by that for France, and then the U.S. The Vietnamese placed greater emphasis on Chinese and French confrontations because those wars lasted longer. Rosling, as an outsider, saw the Vietnam War (or Resistance War Against America) as the most important. The monuments also show how comparing puts numbers in perspective. A 200-year confrontation is a larger part of history than a 20-year one.

“They worry about all kinds of dangers ‘out there.’ Natural disasters kill so many people, diseases spread, and airplanes crash. They all happen all the time out there, beyond the horizon. It’s a bit strange, isn’t it? Such terrifying things rarely happen ‘here,’ in this safe place where we live. But out there, they seem to happen every day. Remember, though, ‘out there’ is the sum of millions of places, while you live in just one place. Of course more bad things happen out there: out there is much bigger than here. So even if all the places out there were just as safe as your place, hundreds of terrible events would still happen there. If you could keep track of each separate place though, you would be surprised how peaceful most of them were. Each of them shows up on your screen only on that single day when something terrible happens. All the other days, you don’t hear about them.” 

This passage illustrates the problem with using abstract terminology like “us” and “them.” The gap instinct causes our size instinct to flare. We see “them” or “there” as having so many problems because we lump everywhere that isn’t “here” together. Aside from being the root cause of divide across the globe, this tendency blinds us to problems where we are. Together, the gap and the size instincts cause us to assume everyone else is so different from us that we cannot find commonality.

“Every pregnancy results in roughly two years of lost menstruation. If you are a manufacturer of menstrual pads, this is bad for business. So you ought to know about, and be so happy about, the drop in babies per woman across the world. You ought to know and be happy too about the growth in the number of educated women working away from home. Because these developments have created an exploding market for your products over the last few decades among billions of menstruating women now living on Levels 2 and 3.

But, as I realized when I attended an internal meeting at one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of sanitary wear, most Western manufacturers have completely missed this. Instead, when hunting for new customers they are often stuck dreaming up new needs among the 300 million menstruating women on Level 4. ‘What if we market an even thinner pad for bikinis? What about pads that are invisible, to wear under Lycra? How about one pad for each kind of outfit, each situation, each sport? Special pads for mountain climbers!’ Ideally, all the pads are so small they need to be replaced several times a day. But like most rich consumer markets, the basic needs are already met, and producers fight in vain to create demand in ever-smaller segments.”

This passage shows the problem of the generalization instinct in terms of consumer culture. Sanitary wear manufacturers think of women on Levels 2 and 3 as across a financial gap and generalize them as too poor to purchase menstruation products. Such a mindset stifles company expansion. Women on Levels 2 and 3 need menstruation products just as much as women on Level 1, but the gap instinct prevents companies from seeing this need clearly. As a result, more money and materials are spent on unnecessary products for a few consumers when a bigger profit could be turned by marketing to billions of additional customers.

“‘Come, run faster!’ shouted her friend from the door of the elevator, and she stretched her leg out to stop the doors from closing. Everything then happened very quickly. The doors just continued to close tightly around my student’s leg. She cried out in pain and fear. The elevator started moving upward. She cried out louder. Just as I realized this young woman’s leg was going to get crushed against the top of the doorway, our host leaped across the elevator and hit the red emergency stop button. He hissed at me to help and between us we prised the doors far enough apart to release my student’s bleeding limb.” 

As this story illustrates, people generalize the world based on their experiences. On Level 4, elevators have sensors that stop the doors from closing if something blocks them. This student, from Level 4, assumed elevators everywhere in the world worked this way. By generalizing that all elevators are like Level 4 elevators, the young woman could have suffered a significant injury. Because she had never seen an elevator without safety features, she had no reason to believe this elevator could endanger her. Here, the danger to the student was physical, but our generalization instinct can also lead us to believe that “different” is “bad.”

“‘Oh, yes, you talked about eradicating extreme poverty, which is a beginning, but you stopped there. Do you think Africans will settle with getting rid of extreme poverty and be happy living in only ordinary poverty?’ She put a firm hand on my arm and looked at me without anger but also without a smile. I saw a strong will to make me understand my shortcomings. ‘As a finishing remark you said that you hoped your grandchildren would come as tourists to Africa and travel on the new high-speed trains we plan to build. What kind of a vision is that? It is the same old European vision.’ Nkosazana looked me straight in my eyes. ‘It is my grandchildren who are going to visit your continent and travel on your high-speed trains and visit that exotic ice hotel I’ve heard you have up in northern Sweden. It is going to take a long time, we know that. It is going to take lots of wise decisions and large investments. But my 50-year vision is that Africans will be welcome tourists in Europe and not unwanted refugees.’” 

This passage shows how people don’t want to settle or be forced into someone else’s idea of productivity. People on Level 4 have ideas to help the rest of the world achieve financial stability, but those ideas often follow a Western perspective. The generalization instinct makes us compartmentalize “poor” countries as places that need to be helped according to the single vision of stability; the single perspective instinct offers the solution as a simple matter: make Africa more like Europe and America. In reality, the people of Africa want to find financial stability on their own terms, in order to keep their cultures and lifestyles intact.

“For example, the simple and beautiful idea of the free market can lead to the simplistic idea that all problems have a single cause—government interference—which we must always oppose; and that the solution to all problems is to liberate market forces by reducing taxes and removing regulations, which we must always support.

Alternatively, the simple and beautiful idea of equality can lead to the simplistic idea that all problems are caused by inequality, which we should always oppose; and that the solution to all problems is redistribution of resources, which we should always support.”

The single perspective instinct has great potential for single-minded thought, and it feeds the generalization instinct. Here, Rosling shows how having a single perspective can lead us to whole-heartedly support or decry ideas. The generalization instinct takes this process a step further and allows us to label things as either “all good” or “all bad.” For example, the redistribution of resources seems like a problem-solving action, but if taken too far, it leads to communism, which has a history of failing in practice. When directed at people, the single perspective instinct forces gaps and stereotypes. 

“I was talking to some gynecologists whose job it was to collect data about sexually transmitted diseases in poor communities. These professionals were ready to put their fingers anywhere on people, and to ask them all kinds of questions about their sexual activities. I was interested to know whether some STDs were more common in some income groups, and so I asked them to include a question about income on their forms. They looked at me and said, ‘What? You can’t ask people about their incomes. That is an extremely private question.’ The one place they didn’t want to put their fingers was in people’s wallets.”

In this passage, Rosling voices his appreciation for experts but warns the reader that they do not have the last word on information, even in their fields. The gynecologists in this example hyper-focused on sexual history and activity as the cause of sexually transmitted diseases, refusing to acknowledge money as a contributing factor. These experts were unwilling to step outside their comfort zones to gain more insight into a public health situation. Their reluctance could lead to skewed or inaccurate data showing no change or change in the wrong direction because they didn’t have all the facts.

“The United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as other capitalist countries on Level 4—around $9,400 compared to around $3,600—and for that money its citizens can expect lives that are three years shorter. The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world, but 39 countries have longer life expectancies.

Instead of comparing themselves with extreme socialist regimes, US citizens should be asking why they cannot achieve the same levels of health, for the same cost, as other capitalist countries that have similar resources. The answer is not difficult, by the way: it is the absence of the basic public health insurance that citizens of most other countries on Level 4 take for granted. Under the current US system, rich, insured patients visit doctors more than they need, running up costs, while poor patients cannot afford even simple, inexpensive treatments and die younger than they should. Doctors spend time that could be used to save lives or treat illness providing unnecessary, meaningless care.”

Here, Rosling uses the United States as an example of how the Level 4 perspective can lead to waste. If the United States adopted public health insurance at a similar cost paid by other Level-4 countries, the U.S. would save approximately $6000 per year, money which could be put toward better use elsewhere. This passage also shows the financial burden of the fear instinct within a Level 4 economy. With fewer worries, our brains invent things to fear, which contributes to frequent doctors’ visits. People seek treatment when none is needed, forcing insurance companies to pay for unnecessary medical treatment and increasing the amount of per capita insurance paid each year. Fear of illness causes the United States to use resources unnecessarily.

“The blame instinct is the instinct to find a clear, simple reason for why something bad has happened. I had this instinct just recently when I was taking a shower in a hotel and turned the warm handle up to maximum. Nothing happened. Then, seconds later, I was being burned by scorching water. In those moments, I was furious with the plumber, and then the hotel manager, and then the person who might be running cold water next door. But no one was to blame. No one had intentionally caused me harm or been neglectful, except perhaps me, when I didn’t have the patience to turn the warm handle more gradually.” 

This passage shows the cycle of blame as an everyday occurrence. After wanting to blame anyone who might have been the least bit responsible for his situation, Rosling calmed down and realized no one was at fault but him. If he had blamed the plumber or hotel manager, the situation would be no different, proving that placing blame fixes nothing. Only when Rosling took responsibility for not exercising care did his situation improve. The same is true on larger scales. Taking responsibility for poverty or violence or other global issues allows us to work toward resolutions. 

“The body’s largest organ is the skin. Before modern medicine, one of the worst imaginable skin diseases was syphilis, which would start as itchy boils and then eat its way into the bones until it exposed the skeleton. The microbe that caused this disgusting sight and unbearable pain had different names in different places. In Russia it was called the Polish disease. In Poland it was the German disease; in Germany, the French disease; and in France, the Italian disease. The Italians blamed back, calling it the French disease.” 

The blame instinct triggers the generalization and the gap instincts. The people of each country listed here didn’t want to be responsible for the devastating effects of syphilis, so they placed blame for the disease on where it might have come from. By doing this, the blaming country established a gap between “us” (the affected place) and “them” (the place responsible for affecting us). The generalization instinct then allowed people from Russia to believe all Polish people were bad, and so on. What began as blame expands to an ever-widening gap based on grouping all of the people of a given nation into a single category.

“Now or never! Learn Factfulness now! Tomorrow may be too late! You have reached the final instinct. Now it is time for you to decide. This moment will never come back. Never again will all these instincts be right there at the front of your mind. You have a unique opportunity, today, right now, to capture the insights of this book and completely change the way you think forever. Or you can just finish the book, close it, say to yourself ‘that was strange,’ and carry on exactly as before. But you have to decide now. You have to act now. Will you change the way you think today? Or live in ignorance forever? It’s up to you.” 

Here, Rosling uses a typical advertising CTA (call to action) to illustrate the urgency instinct. Presented this way, a fact-based worldview presents many once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that will never come again. If we slow down and think past the urgency instinct, we realize this is not true. Rosling makes it clear in Factfulness that changing our outlook is a process that takes time. Companies, activists, and other groups who want our attention use this kind of language to trigger the urgency instinct and make us believe we must act now. 

“And I don’t like exaggeration. Exaggeration undermines the credibility of well-founded data: in this case, data showing that climate change is real, that it is largely caused by greenhouse gases from human activities such as burning fossil fuels, and that taking swift and broad action now would be cheaper than waiting until costly and unacceptable climate change happened. Exaggeration, once discovered, makes people tune out altogether.” 

Throughout Factfulness, Rosling discusses the importance of meaningful data. Here, he identifies one of the greatest problems with data—exaggeration. Exaggerated data may look impressive when used to trigger our instincts, but when it’s used in this way, it’s often no longer accurate. Exaggerated data may work in the short term, but once people understand the numbers aren’t true, the data loses its credibility. Rather than being spurred to action, we ignore the message. No action is taken, and nothing gets accomplished.

“There is a sixth candidate for this list. It is the unknown risk. It is the probability that something we have not yet even thought of will cause terrible suffering and devastation. That is a sobering thought. While it is truly pointless worrying about something unknown that we can do nothing about, we must also stay curious and alert to new risks, so that we can respond to them.” 

This passage comes after Rosling identifies five global risks that concern him most (pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change, and extreme poverty). Here, he introduces the idea that there is always unknown risk and that worry does not make the unknown any less likely. Feeling as if we must take urgent action against any potential problem is impractical, stressful, and leads to exhaustion. The world continues to change, sometimes outside our understanding, and thinking urgently about everything that could go wrong only hurts us. 

“The other risks I have mentioned are highly probable scenarios that would bring unknown levels of future suffering. Extreme poverty isn’t really a risk. The suffering it causes is not unknown, and not in the future. It’s a reality. It’s misery, day to day, right now. It is also where Ebola outbreaks come from, because there are no health services to encounter them at an early stage; and where civil wars start, because young men desperate for food and work, and with nothing to lose, tend to be more willing to join brutal guerrilla movements. It’s a vicious circle: poverty leads to civil war, and civil war leads to poverty. The civil conflicts in Afghanistan and central Africa mean that all other sustainability projects in those places are on hold. Terrorists hide in the few remaining areas of extreme poverty. When rhinos are stuck in the middle of a civil war, it’s much more difficult to save them.” 

On Level 4, where daily needs are met, it is easy to think conditions on Level 1 don’t affect us. Here, Rosling shows how the extreme poverty of Level 1 is a global problem. Species, such as rhinos, may become endangered or extinct because their habitats become battlegrounds. Outbreaks of disease start on Level 1 and, if they are not checked, can spread up the income ladder before they are brought under control by the medical services a higher income affords. Eradicating poverty helps everyone, not only those currently living under impoverished conditions.