Apoorva's Reviews > Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Factfulness is written by Hans Rosling, a doctor, a researcher, and a lecturer in global health along with his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling, both of whom were responsible for compiling the data. The data is presented in the form of bubble charts, graphs and it’s verified by international organizations.

The aim of the book is to fight ignorance and dramatic worldview with well-researched facts and global statistics. This book starts off with a quick 13 question quiz to test how you see the world in general. The author then proceeds to explain the world and banish misconceptions using different instincts.

Key points :

When you use the GPS in your car, it is important that it is using the right information.

It’s obsolete to divide the countries into developed and developing countries. The majority fit into developed countries. It’s proper to classify countries into 4 income levels starting from Level 1 that has poorest countries to Level 4 that has richest countries.

The majority of people live in the middle and the author explains how life looks like on all levels based on his interviews with people on all levels. This new way of classification helps to understand the world in a practical way without any prejudice and misconceptions by dividing the world into two categories.

You can look at the lives of people on different levels by visiting Dollar Street, a project where lives of about 300 families in more than 50 countries have been photographed and documented.

Warning: Objects in Your Memories Were Worse Than They Appear.

The author dispels the negativity instinct i.e. ‘Things are getting worse’ by presenting the improvements that happened and those that are taking place actively. Some improvements are happening so gradually that they’re inconspicuous so it’s easier to dismiss them.

Small advances go unreported by the media but these changes add up in a long run. Also, people tend to glorify their pasts. I’m sure you’ve come across people who start the sentence with ‘In those good old days’, this only strengthens the negativity bias.

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

The attention-grabbing news is the one that generates fear in our mind. The author explains why and how our fear instinct is invoked and urges us to understand the difference between what’s frightening and what’s dangerous as it leads us to shift our attention from something that’s risky to something that’s mildly harmful.

This can cause people to make rash decisions by calling on our urgency instinct. Thinking about the worst case scenarios only makes people take quick decisions without thinking critically.

The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone.

The size instinct leads us to get things out of proportion by shifting our focus to an individual entity. It’s important to compare a lone number with another to get a clear image for eg. We should compare data from the present with the past. Also, the most important thing is to understand what the numbers explain about the real world.

The generalization instinct leads us to group together things which are unrelated and on a large scale, it forms a stereotype that can cause people to draw wrong conclusions about a certain entity. The author also illustrated how the cultures, religious values, people and nations constantly changing and progressing.

If you really want to change the world you have to understand it.

The single perspective instinct leads people to conclude that all problems have a single cause and they blame a singular identity like the government or the management while reality is much more complex than that. It’s better to be open to different ideas.

Conclusion :

Still I’m possibilistic. The next generation is like the last runner in a very long relay race.

The author is candid while putting forward facts and he has used experiences from his life to present his ideas. He also admits the mistakes he made in the past due to ignorance and his instincts which make reading the book an interesting experience. While reading, you can just feel how dedicated he is to his work.

I don’t mean to be dramatic (!) but reading this book has really been an eye-opening experience as I got to see the world from a fresh perspective. Journalists and documentarians prefer to tell stories that create conflict and hence, they should not be relied upon to show the unfiltered picture of the world.

Despite explaining how media is responsible for presenting the distorted view of the world, the author does not blame them; he blames the different instincts that guide people. In order to break away from those instincts, he urges us to constantly keep updating our knowledge and changing our views in accordance with the newly discovered facts.

This book does not try to make us see the world through rose tinted glasses, far from it. The author admits that the world is still bad but there’s no denying that it has gotten better and it is getting better. This was a very insightful and informative book. I believe this book should be read by everyone.




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