Hans Rosling is a phenomenal human being. He’s a Swedish physician and epidemiologist whom had worked in many poorest villages in the world - like in Mozambique, Zaire, and Tanzania - had taught and gave speeches in many more places around the world from his native Sweden to India to Canada to Iran to Vietnam, and also had worked with many UN agencies, influencing global elites from Melinda Gates, to Mark Zuckeberg, to Al Gore, to Fidel Castro, and the many Davos crowds along the way.
He is one of the most qualified persons to teach about global health, and perhaps one of few people who have the right to be pessimistic about the world, considering what he had witnessed and experienced directly in the world. But yet, his life's work and mission is the total opposite of that. In a world where the majority of news headlines are giving us the impression that the state of the world is getting worse by the day, Rosling appears with the counter perception with undisputed arguments: through data and charts.
This book is the culmination of this mission. With a kind and worldly professor vibe, which is reflected in the relaxed tone of his writing (and the fun fact that he's a proud sword swallower), he breaks down the paragraphs into bite size sub-chapters that makes the book easy to digest. And then with every argument he makes, he backs it up with the statistics and the charts that comes with it. And oh how he loves his charts. He has every imaginable charts there is in the world, from life expectancy, immunization, to plane crash deaths, legal slavery, to guitar per capita, new movies, even the projection of his grandson’s height.
Moreover, Rosling created 4 income levels to make it easier to analyse the condition of countries over the world, with Level 1 to Level 4 progress. Level 1 is extreme poverty: $1 per day (roughly 1 billion people live like this today). Level 2: $4 a day (roughly 3 billion people live like this today). Level 3: $16 per day (roughly 2 billion people live like this today). Level 4: more than $64 a day (roughly 1 billion people live like this today).
So, the state of the world is not getting worse, in fact if we look at the many charts in the book it is strikingly obvious that we've never had it better than today. For example, contrary to popular belief the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has almost halved in the past 20 years. In the year 1800 around 85% of humanity lived on Level 1, but just 20 years ago it was down to 29%, while today it is 9%. Global life expectancy has also grown from an average age of 30 years old in 1800, to 60 years in 1973, to 72 years as at the writing of the book in 2016-2017. Even the label developing and developed countries are technically wrong, since today 75% of people live in middle-income countries, or between Level 2 and Level 3. “Not poor, not rich, but somewhere in the middle and starting to live a reasonable life.”
Rosling then teaches us how to read the data more closely. For example, we can measure the "temperature" of a society from the child mortality rate, because children are very fragile and there are so many things that can kill them. He reasoned, "[w]hen only 14 children die out of 1000 in Malaysia, this means that the other 986 survive. Their parents and their society manage to protect them from all the dangers that could have killed them: germs, starvation, violence, and so on. So this number 14 tells us that most families in Malaysia have enough food, their sewage systems don’t leak into their drinking water, they have good access to primary health care, and mothers can read and write. It doesn’t just tell us about the health of children. It measures the quality of the whole society."
Moreover, in a Daniel Kahneman-esque approach, Rosling also challenges our cognitive biases on seeing the world with such negative judgements. He explained "[i]n large part, it is because of our negativity instinct: our instinct to notice the bad more than the good. There are three things going on here: the misremembering of the past; selective reporting by journalists and activists; and the feeling that as long as things are bad it’s heartless to say they are getting better."
Particularly on addressing the role of the media on selective reporting, he made a good point on the unavailability of breaking news in the past: "When Europeans slaughtered indigenous peoples across America a few centuries ago, it didn’t make the news back in the old world. When central planning resulted in mass famine in rural China, millions starved to death while the youngsters in Europe waving communist red flags knew nothing about it. 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."
And of course there's the common adage that bad news sell more than good news. For instance, the media report on plane crashes, that made some people afraid of flying. In 2016 a total of 40 million commercial passenger flights landed safely at their destinations, with 10 ended in fatal accidents. But of course, the 10 that didn't make it were the ones the media wrote about, the 0.000025% of the total.
However, this is not saying that the true state of the world is all rosy and that the media is manipulating us all, this is not being optimistic for optimism’s sake. Instead, he acknowledged that everything is not fine, and that we should still be very concerned. "As long as there are plane crashes, preventable child deaths, endangered species, climate change deniers, male chauvinists, crazy dictators, toxic waste, journalists in prison, and girls not getting an education because of their gender, as long as any such terrible things exist, we cannot relax."
But, he elaborates, "it is just as ridiculous, and just as stressful, to look away from the progress that has been made." So instead, he explain it in a simple analogy: we should see the world like we see a premature baby in incubator. Yes her health is critical and it’s bad, we should not relax and stop worrying. But the baby’s condition is improving day by day in the intensive care, so yes the situation is improving. It is both bad and better at the same time. In this light, his brilliant explanation and analysis on the reality of climate change and refugee crisis have completely changed the way I see these problems.
In this sense, he labels himself with a word that he made up himself: a possibilist. "It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview." True to his mission, he dedicate several chapters on teaching us to become a possibilist, including training us to refrain from reacting from URGENT news or message or sale or offer that prompt us to make quick (and rash and uncalculated) decisions NOW!
Hans Rosling sadly passed away in 2017, 2 months before the book was published, making this book his last ever contribution to society. In fact, his last days were spent reading and editing the draft that would become this book. And towards the end of the book he provides 5 global risks that we should worry about, the 1st of which was global pandemic, which in 2016-2017 he amazingly described a scenario similar with Covid-19 that we are experiencing right now.
Like many others, I first knew about this book because it is the book that Bill Gates gave away to all graduates in US college and universities in 2018. And after reading it, I get it. I understand why Gates specifically chose this book.
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Flip to back Flip to front
| Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $27.94 | $21.96 |
- Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 3 million more titles
-
Audiobook
$0.00 - 185 Used from $1.80 57 New from $8.48
- 74 Used from $5.50 33 New from $6.83
- 1 Used from $21.96 2 New from $27.94
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Get the free Kindle app: 
Enjoy a great reading experience when you borrow the Kindle edition of this book with your Kindle Unlimited membership.
Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
Frequently bought together
- +
- +
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Popular Highlights in this book
Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.Highlighted by 7,356 Kindle readers- Uncontrolled, our appetite for the dramatic goes too far, prevents us from seeing the world as it is, and leads us terribly astray.Highlighted by 6,756 Kindle readers
- 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.Highlighted by 5,994 Kindle readers
- This is because illusions don’t happen in our eyes, they happen in our brains.Highlighted by 4,616 Kindle readers
- Only actively wrong “knowledge” can make us score so badly.Highlighted by 4,606 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
Atul Kumar Singh
Read this review and save your money
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on March 20, 2019
Atul Kumar Singh
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on March 20, 2019
The book literally begins with a tone of “Why I am right and everyone is wrong” – because I gave simple questions to a lot of people and they all got it wrong. Well, people got it wrong because they have been conditioned to it, it’s the failure of our education and society in general, nothing wrong with that. The whole premise of the book is that we need to open up our eyes to the wide array of positive changes that are taking place in the world, and the world is getting better at most of the metrics be it child mortality, per capita income, healthcare, deaths to due to diseases, children being vaccinated, literacy levels, gender equality and what not. On the face of it, yes, mostly the world is getting better and it can be proved with data and statistics.
What did I like about the book?
1. Rosling tells you to believe that world is getting better (and he proves so with the use of data), and at the same time keep an eye out for the bad things (because they need to be improved too). I think this is a realistic world view, where you celebrate the progress and keep working on improving the things that need attention.
2. Every statement is supported by facts, figures, charts and a lot of data (simple to understand).
3. The book basically imbibes a more realistic (if positive is too strong a word here) outlook towards the world.
4. You learn to look at data cautiously, trying to overcome your bias and instincts.
5. You learn to look at media publications, news etc with a pinch of salt and would know better than they prefer showing ‘bad’ stuff rather than ‘good’ stuff. The media blows everything out of proportion and unfortunately, most people believe it.
6. Finally, you learn about your 10 instincts and would be more aware of them whenever you hear any news or information that talks about how bad the world has become. You learn to look at things from multiple perspectives, suppress these instincts, and eventually be more rational.
What I did not like about the book?
1. The book is based on figures and statistics to prove the point. But as it’s true with statistics, there’s more to it than what meets the eye. For example, Rosling says there’s no such thing as a ‘Developed’ and ‘Developing’ country anymore, a majority of the countries are now ‘Middle Income’ countries. He’s right, no doubt about that. But what makes up a ‘Middle Income’ country. If you make more than $2 a day, you are in the middle-income group. But does that ensure a good living? What is the meaning of $2 in the context of living standards? Isn’t this progress so slow that many generations will not even witness the progress?
2. Rosling has used averages to convey the point of progress while cautioning the user against them at the same time. As compared to maybe a few decades ago, there are only 1 Billion people living at Level 1 (Extreme Poverty) and trends show you that this number has decreased drastically. But if you look at it in absolute terms, we are talking about 1 Billion people on this planet who don’t get enough food to eat on a daily basis! That’s a huge number.
3. Rosling has underplayed suffering and lack of resources, and covered it with the statistically correct ‘progress’. It’s like saying, so what if your food lacks nutrition and variety, at least you’re getting better than what you were getting a decade back. It’s funny really and seems such a farce at times. Definitely, he’s not wrong when he says progress has happened, but the meaning of ‘progress’ would differ for different people. His overall thesis, that we live in a much better world than we imagine, is comforting, but “better” might still be “terrible” in some cases.
Let’s look at the book summary now! Rosling talks about our ten ‘Dramatic Instincts’ (and 10 reasons why we are wrong about the world). Here they are –
1. The Gap Instinct - We tend to divide the things into 2 distinct groups and imagine a gap between them. To control gap instinct, look for the majority. Beware of the averages, if you look at the spread, the majority will overlap. Beware comparisons of extremes (Media loves to do it).
2. The Negativity Instinct - We tend to instinctively notice the bad more than the good. We need to learn to acknowledge the fact that things can be both ‘better’ and ‘bad’ at the same time. Example, education levels have improved over time, but still, 10% of the children don’t get any education, that’s bad. We also need to know that good news is never reported, media would hype the bad stuff always. Subsequently, gradual improvement isn’t reported either. Countries, government, media often try to glorify the past, so we need to be beware of these rosy pasts.
3. The Straight Line Instinct - When we see a line going up steadily, we tend to assume the line will continue to go up in the foreseeable future. To control this instinct, remember that curves come in different shapes. Finally, don’t assume straight lines if data doesn’t show it.
4. The Fear Instinct - We tend to perceive the world to be scarier than it really is. We overestimate the risks associated with violence, captivity, contamination etc. The world seems scarier because what you hear has been carefully selected to be told. Remember, Risk = Danger x Exposure, and act accordingly. Make decisions only when you’re calm, not when you are afraid.
5. The Size Instinct - We tend to see things out of proportion, over-estimating the importance of a single event/person that’s visible to us, and the scale of an issue based on a standalone number. A lonely number may seem impressive in isolation, but can be trivial in comparison to something else. Hence, always look for comparisons. Use the 80/20 rule. When comparing countries, look for rates per person.
6. The Generalization Instinct - We tend to wrongly assume that everything or everyone in a category is similar. Hence, we must look for differences within a group, look for similarities across groups and look for differences across groups. We should beware of the term ‘Majority’ – it can mean 51% or 99% or anything in between. Beware of vivid images, which are easier to recall but can be exceptions than the general norm.
7. The Destiny Instinct - We tend to assume that the destinies of people, cultures, countries etc. are predetermined by certain factors, and such factors are fixed and unchanging, i.e. their destinies are fixed. To control this, we must keep track of gradual changes and improvements. We should update our knowledge on different subjects, and look for examples of cultural changes.
8. The Single Perspective Instinct - We tend to focus on single causes or solutions, which are easier to grasp and make our problems seem easier to solve. It is better to look at problems from multiple perspectives. To control this, always test your ideas and allow people to find weaknesses. Don’t claim to be an expert at all times, be humble about your limited expertise in different areas.
9. The Blame Instinct - When something goes wrong, we instinctively blame it on someone or something. To control this, resist finding a scapegoat. Look for causes, not villains. Finally, look for systems and processes, not heroes.
10. The Urgency Instinct - We tend to rush into a problem or opportunity for fear that there’s no time and we may be too late. To control this, take small steps. Always insist on data rather than making hunch based hasty decisions. Always be aware of the side effects of your hasty decision to avoid making the same.
Favorite Quotes from the Book:
- “The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone.”
- “Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you like to understand reality.”
- “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. Sure, my foot is part of me, but it’s a pretty ugly part. I have better parts.”
To sum up, Factfulness is a good book that explains how our instincts sometimes distort our understanding of our world and why it's crucial to learn established facts that are now reliably and readily available. Our instincts might help in certain situations, but in others, critical thinking beyond emotions is necessary. However, we must learn to look beyond the displayed ‘progress’ also, because even lesser suffering can mean ‘progress’ statistically.
Images in this review
S.P.
Good idea; but not quite worth a book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 21, 2018Anand
The subtitle of the book - 10 reasons we're wrong about the world and why things are better than you think - stays true to his TED ...
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on April 10, 2018Mrs Armtrough
Enlightening and essential reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 28, 2018RoastedCashews
How to lie with statistics
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 1, 2019
