An Overdramatic Worldview

I'm reading a very thought provoking book that's on Bill Gates' top three books list. It is written by Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor, physician, statistician, and speaker known for his data-driven presentations on the state of world health and economy. Popular on TED Talks, his book addresses the phenomenon of faulty world views driving entrenched narratives that misguide our politics and public policy. As I read the book, it made me think of my contribution to the erosion of critical thinking in my marketing role at 3M. Perhaps I'm being a bit overdramatic, but more on that later. First about the book.

"Factfulness: Ten reasons we're wrong about the world - and why things are better than you think," captures realities in global progress that contradict conventional wisdom (or rhetoric). An example:

How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?
□   A: More than doubled
□   B: Remained about the same
□   C: Decreased to less than half

Just 10% of those surveyed on this question came up with the right answer. Watching the news, especially as related to global warming, you could conclude that incidents and the dramatic impact on human life of those incidents are on the rise. In fact, deaths from acts of nature are now just 25% of what they were 100 years ago, with deaths per capita down to 6% of what it was 100 years ago.

How can so many people (including those that presume themselves to be expert) suffer such a misperception? Other perceptions about poverty, vaccination rates, education, health, are similarly  flawed. I've captured a few below:

Many things, especially global health and welfare, are much better than people think. The assumption  that they are worse - in many cases much worse - is held by the majority of people at all demographic levels. A random selection of answers would fair better than ANY of these survey results. How can that be? That means that a vast majority of people in the world are systematically wrong in their world view. This includes the better educated - medical students, bankers, executives in multinational companies, senior political decision makers - a majority who get the answers wrong and, in some groups, even worse than the general public.

Why? According to Hans, the answer can be found in how the human brain works. Evolution has led to instincts that help us survive, and to process vast information and stimuli, without much thinking, so we can react quickly to our environment. Those instincts, ten of which he specifically defines and describes, result in an "overdramatic worldview that draws people to the most dramatic and negative answers to my fact questions."

“Think about the world. War, violence, natural disasters, man-made disasters, corruption. Things are bad, and it feels like they are getting worse, right? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and the number of poor just keeps increasing; and we will soon run out of resources unless we do something drastic. At least that’s the picture that most Westerners see in the media and carry around in their heads. I call it the overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading.”

And most importantly, it's wrong. So why is the wrong, out-dated worldview so persistent? He suggests it's due to the human appetite for drama and negativity. Which is fueled by anecdotal story-telling, and feeling, not thinking. That's where the link to my marketing career enters into the picture.

And that will have to wait until my next post.

Excerpts from: Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund & Ola Rosling. “Factfulness.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/factfulness/id1320917749?mt=11