Factfulness by Hans Rosling

Title: Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good
Author: Hans Rosling
Year: 2018
Pages: 288

Factfulness is one of the books that I recommend the most to people when they ask me about “what to read next?”

Welcome to the world of Factfulness, a book that will challenge the way you think about the world and transform the way you understand global issues.

With a compelling narrative and eye-opening insights, Factfulness by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, will take you on a journey through the myths and misconceptions that shape our perception of the world, and provide you with a refreshing dose of clarity and fact-based knowledge.

So, if you’re ready to challenge your assumptions, and embrace a more accurate and optimistic view of the world, then buckle up and get ready for an exciting adventure with Factfulness!

As a result, I gave this book a rating of 10/10.

For me, a book with a note 10 is one I consider reading again every year. Among the books I rank with 10, for example, is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Key Lessons from Factfulness

Factfulness was written by the late Hans Rosling, his son Ola Rosling, and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and was published in 2018.

Hans Rosling was a Swedish physician, academic, and statistician who devoted his life to improving global health and fighting misinformation.

He was a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and founded the Gapminder Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to promote a fact-based worldview.

Ola Rosling, Hans’ son, is also an expert in global health and has worked with international organizations such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund is a designer and co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation, where she leads the development of the Trendalyzer software that visualizes global statistics.

Hans Rosling, one of the co-authors of the book died in February 2017, before it was fully completed.

However, he had already written a significant portion of the book and had been working on it for several years prior to his passing.

After his death, his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund took over the writing and completed the book in accordance with Hans Rosling’s vision and ideas.

They have acknowledged his contribution to the book and have dedicated the book to his memory.

Together, the authors of Factfulness have decades of experience in understanding and communicating global trends and statistics, and their work has been featured in numerous international media outlets.

The Gapminder Foundation, which they co-founded, continues to work towards promoting a fact-based understanding of global issues and fighting against misinformation.

Factfulness is a book that challenges common misconceptions and myths about the world, and presents a fact-based and optimistic view of the state of the world.

The book is structured around ten “instincts” or cognitive biases that humans have, which often lead us to have a distorted and inaccurate view of the world.

These instincts include a tendency to divide the world into two categories, an inclination to fear things that have recently happened, and a tendency to assume that things will continue to be as they have always been.

The Gap Instinct: Our tendency is to divide things into two distinct and often conflicting groups with an imagined gap between them (e.g. us and them).

Factfulness is… recognizing when a story talks about a gap, and remembering that this paints a picture of two separate groups, with a gap in between. This reality is often not polarized at all. Usually, the majority is right there in the middle, where the gap is supposed to be.

The Negativity Instinct: Our tendency is to notice the bad more than the good (e.g. believing that things are getting worse when things are actually getting better).

Factfulness is… recognizing when we get negative news, and remembering what information about bad events is much more likely to reach us. When things are getting better we often don’t hear about them. This gives us a systematically too-negative impression of the world around us, which is very stressful.

The Straight Line Instinct: Our tendency is to assume that a line will just continue straight and ignore that such lines are rare in reality.

Factfulness is… recognizing the assumption that a line will just continue straight, and remembering that such lines are rare in reality.

The Fear Instinct: Our hardwired tendency to pay more attention to frightening things.

Fearfulness is… recognizing when frightening things get our attention, and remembering that these are not necessarily the riskiest. Our natural fears of violence, captivity, and contamination make us systematically overestimate these risks.

The Size Instinct: Our tendency to get things out of proportion, or misjudge the size of things (e.g. we systematically overestimate the proportions of immigrants in our countries.)

Factfulness is… recognizing when a lonely number seems impressive (small or large), and remembering that you could get the opposite impression if it were compared with or divided by some other relevant number.

The Generalization Instinct: Our tendency is to mistakenly group together things or people, or countries that are actually very different.

Factfulness is… recognizing when a category is being used in an explanation, and remembering that categories can be misleading. We can’t stop generalization and we shouldn’t even try. What we should try to avoid is generalizing incorrectly.

The Destiny Instinct: The idea is that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions, or cultures; that things are as they are because of inescapable reasons.

Factfulness is… recognizing that many things (including people, countries, religions, and cultures) appear to be constant just because the change is happening slowly, and remembering that even small, slow changes gradually add up to big changes.

The Single Perspective: Our tendency is to focus on a single cause or perspective when it comes to understanding the world (e.g. forming your worldview by relying on the media, alone).

Factfulness is… recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions.

The Blame Instinct: Our tendency is to find a clear, simple reason for why something bad has happened.

Factfulness is… recognizing when a scapegoat is being used and remembering that blaming an individual often steals the focus from other explanations and blocks our ability to prevent similar problems in the future.

The Urgency Instinct: Our tendency to take immediate action in the face of perceived imminent danger, and in doing so, amplify our other instincts.

Fearfulness is… recognizing when a decision feels urgent and remembering that it rarely is.

A lot of important and real instincts, right?

They use data and statistics to illustrate how the world has changed over the years, and how these changes have led to an overall improvement in the quality of life for people all over the world.

They also discuss topics such as health, education, poverty, and the environment, and present evidence to show that, despite persistent problems, the world is getting better overall.

The authors also address common myths and misconceptions about the world, such as the idea that the world is overpopulated or that global poverty is increasing.

They use data and statistics to refute these myths and to show that, in many cases, things are much better than we might think.

The book is a call to action for readers to think critically about the information they receive and to seek out accurate, fact-based information about the world.

It encourages readers to have a more nuanced and optimistic view of the world and to work towards building a better future for all.

My Book Highlights & Quotes

There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear

As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful

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

The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone

Things can be bad, and getting better

Here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and safer

Being intelligent—being good with numbers, or being well educated, or even winning a Nobel Prize—is not a shortcut to global factual knowledge. Experts are experts only within their field

There was a balance. It wasn’t because humans lived in balance with nature. Humans died in balance with nature

Think about the world. War, violence, natural disasters, man-made disasters, corruption. Things are bad, and it feels like they are getting worse, right? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and the number of poor just keeps increasing; and we will soon run out of resources unless we do something drastic. At least that’s the picture that most Westerners see in the media and carry around in their heads. I call it the overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading. In fact, the vast majority of the world’s population lives somewhere in the middle of the income scale. Perhaps they are not what we think of as middle class, but they are not living in extreme poverty. Their girls go to school, their children get vaccinated, they live in two-child families, and they want to go abroad on holiday, not as refugees. 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

When things are getting better we often don’t hear about them. This gives us a systematically too-negative impression of the world around us, which is very stressful

Never leave a number all by itself. Never believe that one number on its own can be meaningful. If you are offered one number, always ask for at least one more. Something to compare it with

Cultures, nations, religions, and people are not rocks. They are in constant transformation

We like to believe that things happen because someone wanted them to, that individuals have power and agency: otherwise, the world feels unpredictable, confusing, and frightening

When abortion is made illegal it doesn’t stop abortions from happening, but it does make abortions more dangerous and increase the risk of women dying as a result

That is all there is to the 80/20 rule. We tend to assume that all items on a list are equally important, but usually, just a few of them are more important than all the others put together

The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected—by your own attention filter or by the media

The majority of people live neither in low-income countries nor in high-income countries, but in middle-income countries. This category doesn’t exist in the divided mindset, but in reality, it definitely exists

Beware comparisons of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all

Beware comparisons of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere at the bottom, right where the gap is supposed to be

When in the past whole species or ecosystems were destroyed, no one realized or even cared. Alongside all the other improvements, our surveillance of suffering has improved tremendously. This improved reporting is itself a sign of human progress, but it creates the impression of the exact opposite

Good things are not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you

Gradual improvements is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement

More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world

Parents in extreme poverty need many children for the reasons I set out earlier: for child labor but also to have extra children in case some children die. It is the countries with the highest child mortality rates, like Somalia, Chad, Mali, and Niger, where women have the most babies: between five and eight. Once parents see children survive, once the children are no longer needed for child labor, and once the women are educated and have information about and access to contraceptives, across cultures and religions both the men and the women instead start dreaming of having fewer, well-educated children

Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to

For the first time in world history, data exists for almost every aspect of global development. And yet, because of our dramatic instincts and the way the media must tap into them to grab our attention, we continue to have an overdramatic worldview. Of all our dramatic instincts, it seems to be the fear instinct that most strongly influences what information gets selected by mews producers and presented to us consumers

Yet here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe

In 1986 there were 64,000 nuclear warheads in the world; today there are 15,000. So the fear instinct can sure help to remove terrible things from the world. On other occasions, it runs out of control, distorts our risk assessment, and causes terrible harm

The Scary World: fear vs reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected-by your own attention filter or by the media-precisely because it is scary

Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided

Be especially careful about big numbers. It is a strange thing, but numbers over a certain size, when they are not compared with anything else, always look big. And how can something big not be important?

Beware of “the majority.” The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between

Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule

Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think, in what way is this a smart solution?

The destiny instinct is the idea that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions, or cultures. It’s the idea that things are as they are for ineluctable, inescapable reasons: they have always been this way and will never change

Factfulness is… recognizing that many things (including people, countries, religions, and cultures) appear to be constant just because the change is happening slowly, and remembering that even small, slow changes gradually add up to big changes. To control the destiny instinct, remember slow change is still change

Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades

Talk to grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparent’s values and how they differ from yours

Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s

Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields

The blame instinct makes us exaggerate the importance of individuals or of particular groups. This instinct to find a guilty party derails our ability to develop a true, fact-based understanding of the world: it steals our focus as we obsess about someone to blame, then blocks our learning because once we have decided who to punch in the face we stop looking for explanations elsewhere. This undermines our ability to solve the problem, or prevent it from happening again, because we are stuck with oversimplisitc finger pointing, which distracts us from the more complex truth and prevents us from focusing our energy in the right places

Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blamr. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation

Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit

I don’t tell you not to worry. I will tell you to worry about the right things. I don’t tell you to look away from the news or to ignore the activists’ call to action. I tell you to ignore the noise, but keep an eye on the big global risks. I don’t tell you not to be afraid. I tell you to stay coolheaded and support the global collaborations we need to reduce these risks. Control your urgency instinct. Control all your dramatic instincts. Be less stressed by the imaginary problems of an overdramatic world, and more alert to the real problems and how to solve them

Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful

Beware of fortune tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before

In conclusion, Factfulness is a powerful and thought-provoking book that challenges the reader to think critically about their assumptions and beliefs about the world.

The authors use data and statistics to demonstrate that the world is not as bad as we might think and that there is a reason for optimism about the future. By identifying and debunking common myths and misconceptions about the world, the authors encourage readers to seek out accurate information and develop a more nuanced and fact-based understanding of global issues.

Through their work with the Gapminder Foundation, the authors continue to promote a fact-based worldview and fight against misinformation.

As we navigate an increasingly complex and interconnected world, Factfulness provides a valuable perspective and a framework for understanding the world in a more accurate and optimistic way.

It is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the world and work towards building a better future for all.

One of my top 3 books!

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