Here are 16 phenomena that are occurring with increasing frequency
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 9:49 am
Comparing the extremes
We are instinctively drawn to extreme examples because they are simply easy to remember . On the one hand, we have South Sudan, and on the other, for example, Sweden. There will always be the richest and the poorest, there will always be the worst and the best systems. However, the fact of extremes tells us nothing. Most can usually be read from what is in between, and that is the picture of reality.
#3. Top view
The greatest and most important challenge in creating a world based on facts is to understand that most of it is created from our own experiences. Our experiences are created from what Rosling calls "level 4" (we have running water, we drive our own cars, we can afford to have a kitchen and prepare nutritious food, and we have a bed and a sofa in our home).
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The experiences of other groups are filtered through mass media that love extremes (who hasn’t seen girls from Nepal walking several hours a day in the mountains to get to school?) What is needed georgia mobile phone numbers database to prevent stereotypes from taking over our world and real knowledge? Data. Hans Rosling argues that reality is not polarized. Usually, the majority is somewhere in the middle – exactly where we expect the abyss.
Instead, Factfulness proposes a new framework for thinking about the world, divided into four groups by income:
A billion people live in level 1. This is what we call extreme poverty. If you are in level 1, you survive on less than $2 a day and you move around barefoot. Your food is cooked on an open fire, and you spend most of your day traveling for water. At night, you and your children sleep on a dirt floor.
Three billion people live at level 2, spending $2 to $8 a day. Level 2 means you can buy shoes and maybe a bike, so it doesn't take as long to get water. Your kids go to school instead of working all day. Dinner is cooked on a gas stove, and your family sleeps on mattresses instead of the floor.
Two billion people live on level 3, spending between $8 and $32 per day. You have running water and a refrigerator at home. You can also afford a motorcycle to make getting around easier. Some of your children are starting (or even finishing) high school.
One billion people live at Level 4. If you spend more than $32 a day, you are at Level 4. You have at least a high school education and can probably afford to buy a car and take the occasional vacation.
#2. The Pessimistic Instinct
It is a tendency to see the bad more often than the good . “Things are getting worse” is something we hear more and more often. Glaciers are melting, inflation is rising, air pollution is getting worse. When asked “Do you think the situation in the world is getting better, worse or staying the same?” in all 30 countries where the survey was conducted in 2016, the largest percentage of answers was “getting worse”. The author’s response to pessimism is statistics, because never before in human history have we been in such a good situation.
In 1800, about 85 percent of humanity lived at the lowest level, in extreme poverty. All over the world, people simply did not have enough to eat. Childhood? That's a new concept. In Britain, children began working at the age of ten. Until 1966, extreme poverty was the rule, not the exception. Now, let's look at the last 30 years. The rate of extreme poverty is falling at the fastest rate in history. In 1997, 42 percent of the population of India and China lived in extreme poverty.
In 2017, in India, the figure fell to 12 percent, or 270 million people who suffered less. In China, the figure fell to 0.7 percent, or another half a billion people who had crossed the poverty line. Thirty years ago, 29 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty; 20 years later, the figure was 9 percent. Today, almost everyone has managed to escape poverty. And yet, people are still depressed. That is why it is worth emphasizing the changes for the better.
Here are 16 negative phenomena that are becoming less and less common:
You can track the progress of any country, such as Poland, using a publicly available tool that creates bubble charts. Just visit .
The instinct for pessimism reaps its harvest through three mechanisms: inappropriate recall of the past, selective reporting by journalists and activists, and the sense that as long as things are bad, it would be heartless to claim they are better.
#1. The reality of the memories was worse than it seems
For centuries, older people have idealized their youth and constantly repeated that things were better back then. And before that – in many ways – things were worse. People tend to forget the true picture of the past.
#2. Selective information sharing
When we open any media, we are flooded with negative information: war, earthquake, inflation, mass layoffs, crisis. When several centuries ago Europeans were responsible for the complete extinction of the indigenous people of America, this news did not reach the Old Continent.
Positive stories of gradual progress don’t often make the headlines. In the United States, for example, crime has been steadily declining since 1990. And yet most people believe that the rate of lawbreaking is rising. No wonder we feel like the world is getting worse and worse. The media is constantly reporting bad news.
#3. Emotions, not thinking
What is really happening when we say that the world is getting worse? Emotions come into play. The statistics that Hans Rosling offers should neither resemble a comforting “everything will be fine” nor suggest ignoring existing problems.
Rosling is simply a “possible” as he calls himself. This is someone who doesn’t get their hopes up or fears without reason. This is someone who resists an overly negative view of the world. This is not an overly optimistic view either, but rather a clear and rational view of reality.
How to control the instinct of pessimism?
We can help our minds tame situations when everything screams negative:
it is bad, but also better - both states can exist simultaneously;
expect bad news, but look for good news – changes for the better may happen more often than we think, but information about them is harder to reach us;
do not censor history and do not idealize old times - memories of the past can fill us with fear, but they are also a source of information because they show what we have achieved.
#3. Straight Line Instinct
The world's population is still growing and growing. Nothing could be further from the truth! The problem lies in the detail, the word "still". It is true that the population is growing. And at a rapid pace. However, the word "still" means that if we do not do something, the number of people on earth will increase. The instinct of a straight line is responsible for this stereotypical thinking.
Try to answer the following question:
There are about 2 billion children aged 0-15 in the world. How many children will there be in 2100 according to the United Nations estimates?
A/ 4 billion,
B/ 3 billion,
C/ 2 billion.
The correct answer is C. Chimpanzees would get a score of 33%. A group of experts at the World Economic Forum got a score of 26% – that is how many respondents chose the correct answer. And yet the number of children to be born is important information when creating forecasts of the world's population and, for example, for the debate on sustainable development. Our intuition of a straight line is not always a reliable guide in the modern world.
We are instinctively drawn to extreme examples because they are simply easy to remember . On the one hand, we have South Sudan, and on the other, for example, Sweden. There will always be the richest and the poorest, there will always be the worst and the best systems. However, the fact of extremes tells us nothing. Most can usually be read from what is in between, and that is the picture of reality.
#3. Top view
The greatest and most important challenge in creating a world based on facts is to understand that most of it is created from our own experiences. Our experiences are created from what Rosling calls "level 4" (we have running water, we drive our own cars, we can afford to have a kitchen and prepare nutritious food, and we have a bed and a sofa in our home).
We recommend reading:
Read
The experiences of other groups are filtered through mass media that love extremes (who hasn’t seen girls from Nepal walking several hours a day in the mountains to get to school?) What is needed georgia mobile phone numbers database to prevent stereotypes from taking over our world and real knowledge? Data. Hans Rosling argues that reality is not polarized. Usually, the majority is somewhere in the middle – exactly where we expect the abyss.
Instead, Factfulness proposes a new framework for thinking about the world, divided into four groups by income:
A billion people live in level 1. This is what we call extreme poverty. If you are in level 1, you survive on less than $2 a day and you move around barefoot. Your food is cooked on an open fire, and you spend most of your day traveling for water. At night, you and your children sleep on a dirt floor.
Three billion people live at level 2, spending $2 to $8 a day. Level 2 means you can buy shoes and maybe a bike, so it doesn't take as long to get water. Your kids go to school instead of working all day. Dinner is cooked on a gas stove, and your family sleeps on mattresses instead of the floor.
Two billion people live on level 3, spending between $8 and $32 per day. You have running water and a refrigerator at home. You can also afford a motorcycle to make getting around easier. Some of your children are starting (or even finishing) high school.
One billion people live at Level 4. If you spend more than $32 a day, you are at Level 4. You have at least a high school education and can probably afford to buy a car and take the occasional vacation.
#2. The Pessimistic Instinct
It is a tendency to see the bad more often than the good . “Things are getting worse” is something we hear more and more often. Glaciers are melting, inflation is rising, air pollution is getting worse. When asked “Do you think the situation in the world is getting better, worse or staying the same?” in all 30 countries where the survey was conducted in 2016, the largest percentage of answers was “getting worse”. The author’s response to pessimism is statistics, because never before in human history have we been in such a good situation.
In 1800, about 85 percent of humanity lived at the lowest level, in extreme poverty. All over the world, people simply did not have enough to eat. Childhood? That's a new concept. In Britain, children began working at the age of ten. Until 1966, extreme poverty was the rule, not the exception. Now, let's look at the last 30 years. The rate of extreme poverty is falling at the fastest rate in history. In 1997, 42 percent of the population of India and China lived in extreme poverty.
In 2017, in India, the figure fell to 12 percent, or 270 million people who suffered less. In China, the figure fell to 0.7 percent, or another half a billion people who had crossed the poverty line. Thirty years ago, 29 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty; 20 years later, the figure was 9 percent. Today, almost everyone has managed to escape poverty. And yet, people are still depressed. That is why it is worth emphasizing the changes for the better.
Here are 16 negative phenomena that are becoming less and less common:
You can track the progress of any country, such as Poland, using a publicly available tool that creates bubble charts. Just visit .
The instinct for pessimism reaps its harvest through three mechanisms: inappropriate recall of the past, selective reporting by journalists and activists, and the sense that as long as things are bad, it would be heartless to claim they are better.
#1. The reality of the memories was worse than it seems
For centuries, older people have idealized their youth and constantly repeated that things were better back then. And before that – in many ways – things were worse. People tend to forget the true picture of the past.
#2. Selective information sharing
When we open any media, we are flooded with negative information: war, earthquake, inflation, mass layoffs, crisis. When several centuries ago Europeans were responsible for the complete extinction of the indigenous people of America, this news did not reach the Old Continent.
Positive stories of gradual progress don’t often make the headlines. In the United States, for example, crime has been steadily declining since 1990. And yet most people believe that the rate of lawbreaking is rising. No wonder we feel like the world is getting worse and worse. The media is constantly reporting bad news.
#3. Emotions, not thinking
What is really happening when we say that the world is getting worse? Emotions come into play. The statistics that Hans Rosling offers should neither resemble a comforting “everything will be fine” nor suggest ignoring existing problems.
Rosling is simply a “possible” as he calls himself. This is someone who doesn’t get their hopes up or fears without reason. This is someone who resists an overly negative view of the world. This is not an overly optimistic view either, but rather a clear and rational view of reality.
How to control the instinct of pessimism?
We can help our minds tame situations when everything screams negative:
it is bad, but also better - both states can exist simultaneously;
expect bad news, but look for good news – changes for the better may happen more often than we think, but information about them is harder to reach us;
do not censor history and do not idealize old times - memories of the past can fill us with fear, but they are also a source of information because they show what we have achieved.
#3. Straight Line Instinct
The world's population is still growing and growing. Nothing could be further from the truth! The problem lies in the detail, the word "still". It is true that the population is growing. And at a rapid pace. However, the word "still" means that if we do not do something, the number of people on earth will increase. The instinct of a straight line is responsible for this stereotypical thinking.
Try to answer the following question:
There are about 2 billion children aged 0-15 in the world. How many children will there be in 2100 according to the United Nations estimates?
A/ 4 billion,
B/ 3 billion,
C/ 2 billion.
The correct answer is C. Chimpanzees would get a score of 33%. A group of experts at the World Economic Forum got a score of 26% – that is how many respondents chose the correct answer. And yet the number of children to be born is important information when creating forecasts of the world's population and, for example, for the debate on sustainable development. Our intuition of a straight line is not always a reliable guide in the modern world.