Takeaways from the book Factfulness

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

   The book is very insightful and it helps to understand human development and improves our awareness regarding the facts about the world. I highly recommend reading it. According to standard measurements, generally, things are getting better in the world. Numbers are facts and they mean a lot. However, the way of presenting those facts numbers may mislead people and create misconceptions.


   The author mentions several fact questions on common concepts of human development to check the public knowledge and awareness of people about the reality. The most answers were far from the real situation and people have wrong opinions about them. Because of those delusions, we may often overreact the situations, have excessive stress and misconception on things that are happening around us. The book tackles how to learn the facts and react to them correctly.

   Here are my quick lessons from this book. Below are the common human instincts that we often judge and respond to the facts based on them.

1. Gap. Dividing the things into two groups and comparing two extremes is not the right approach to understand the whole story. Never eliminate that there is a huge majority in between. Compare not the averages of given data but check their distributions overlap. 
2. Negativity. Most of us are so sensitive to the negative part of the story. Media mainly picks up negative news to reach people's attention quickly. Remember, there are equally good news and many positive things are also happening.
3. The straight line. Growth does not happen with a straight line, there are bends and ups and downs. Never expect straight-line progress.
4. Fear. It makes us overreact and creates panic in our minds. Estimate the risks when you are frightened. Refrain to do the haphazard actions in this situation.
5. Size. Do not access the situation with a single number. A single number can be used to manipulate people's minds. Ask some more numbers to understand the point by dividing or comparing it to the previous rates.
6. Generalization. Avoid generalizing the facts, split your data into more subcategories to extract better meaning.
7. Destiny. Labeling cultures, nations, religions, and countries with a negative 'destiny factor' is a wrong judgment. All those people and cultures are in a transformation and they are changing.
8. Single perspective. A single perspective limits our vision and reduces our perception ability to understand the problem. See the problem from the different angles and apply other methods too to grab the point well.
9. Blame. Blaming someone or something is not a solution to the problem. Check your system, learn from the mistakes, improve it, and make sure that the next time you won't make the same mistake again.
10. Urgency. We may fail in our decision when the urgency is raised. Slow down your decisions by double-checking the facts and evaluate the side effects of your actions.

   Finally, be careful when you receive the feeds of mass media and news stations. They tend to inform negative news first to get your attention quickly. And this is their job.

   Based on fact data in a book, we can conclude the world is much better than yesterday and there is a lot of progress and positive trends are going on.

   Thank you for reading.