Factfulness

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling

What it’s about

This is a data-driven, optimistic manifesto that challenges our persistently pessimistic worldview. Rosling, the late Swedish physician, statistician, and TED Talk legend (famous for his Gapminder bubble charts), uses global survey results, historical data, and personal anecdotes to show that most people—across education levels and countries—radically underestimate progress on poverty, health, education, violence, and more. We think the world is getting worse; facts show steady, dramatic improvement over decades.

Why I like it

A clear demonstration of the mistakes humans make when fabricating their stories. There is a subset of humans that wish to believe, and to convince others to believe, that the technological progress which has followed the transformation of the governance structures of human populations over the past 500 years as they embraced market forces and freedom of choice, are actually making this worse rather than better in terms of material well-being. To support their narrative they need to state ‘facts’ which are not supported by data, until eventually large numbers of humans take those fabricated ‘facts’ as truth. The extent of the success of this subset of humans is demonstrated by Hans Rosling in this book. It should make everyone wary of what they are being told!