Factfulness Book Review by Hans Rosling

 

Factfulness by Hans Rosling is an amazing book well it's about how our understandings and our instincts shape our thoughts, according to Rosling our thoughts and perception are greatly influenced by what we hear and how we respond to them. In this book Rosling has outlined 10 fundamental instincts and how to guide our instinct's perception towards facts and data.

Hans Rosling is a Swedish doctor, and his book FACTFULNESS is also recommended by Barak Obama and Bill gates

Humans can’t absorb all the information and process it accordingly during evolution humans were in the midst of danger and uncertainties humans couldn’t analyze every situations and information so humans developed instincts and these instincts helped and in simplifying complexities and helped to make quick decision and soon these very  instincts have become our basic nature.

Talking about today we are perhaps safe from dangers but loaded by information and media uses these instincts of ours and reshapes our journey of thinking based on our very own instincts.

There are total of 10 instincts

Gap instincts

To simplify things we humans tend to divide things into 2 categories...

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Good- bad, rich-poor, developed- developing and when we make your decision based in this instinct that decision of ours will be… guess what?

Well, it fails. in this context, if you use your straight line instinct you will think that it will rise, well now pause for a while and think… population is definitely increasing so is the literacy rate right? Will the population grow by leaps and bounds in upcoming years?

Take an example, western countries are considered developed countries whereas eastern and Middle East countries are called developing countries. Actually, the fact is we can’t call all the western countries as developed countries and same goes for eastern countries. To be precise every country has people who are rich and poor, well again it’s wrong to categorize people as rich as poor

Taking consideration of world population, let’s divide people into 4 levels 

L1, L2, L3 and L4

L1= people under poverty

L4= super rich people

L2 ad L3 = middle income

If we analyze the world’s population maximum number of people fall in L2 and L3 category. Whether the country is the USA, Nigeria or Congo there are types of people who are rich or poor or people with a middle range of income.  So, isn’t it wrong to call a country a developed or developing?

Let’s remember this, every situation has its own complexities.

Straight line instinct

When there is a trend quite popular, we tend to think that it will go on and on.  Take an example of the World’s population; the population is growing day by day right? So what do you think world’s population will be after few decades?

Remember the trend can take any shape, can rise can fall it's not stable.

Fear instinct

When we analyze data we can make a conclusion based on that very data still we listen to media and their crispy spicy stories and believe them as these dramatic stories trigger our fear instincts.

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

Single perspective instinct

Simple idea attract us, given a problem we try to find its single cause or a single solution don’t you agree?

Sadly, things are so complex that a single cause or a solution is not possible.

Example, GDP is decreasing we blame the government, existing inequality in society? Well its capitalism single perspective limits your thinking capacity and we tend to follow those who match our thinking or shares a common point of view.

It’s extremely dangerous!

We have to try to

• 1.     Only care about things that we understand
• 2.     And try to understand point of view of people who things opposite to us

Blame instinct

A sad fact; we put blame on one person for something bad, and similarly we give all the credits to a single person

Well we can only minimize this blame instinct by not searching for the wrongdoers to blame instead we have to look for the causes and systems.

Size instinct

Never judge importance of anything based on a single event or number

To avoid this size instinct we have to perform a simple mathematical calculation and that is comparing and dividing’

Generalization instinct

Starting from example of large family size. We blame religion but its not religion to blame is it? It’s the income of the family that is responsible for the size.

Do not generalize on the basis of ideology, group or religion.

Destiny instinct

A thought that one’s destiny is related to one’s place of origin and personality. 

Urgency instinct

We tend to make wrong decisions because of perceived urgency.

Next time when there’s urgency pause and then think about probable scenarios before deciding

Negative instinct

Media loves sharing negative news remember!

Next time when you see negative news remember that there is equally positive news which media is not sharing.

Swedish statistician Hans Rosling and his son Ola Rosling in their book, Factfulness, takes us a step back from the fray to analyze trends and data to see whether our lives are getting worse or better, and show that in the grand scheme perhaps things are better and more hopeful than mass media fueled the majority of everyday people might realize.

“Look for causes, not villains.”

5/5 from my side. 

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