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Are you also the type who thinks the world is getting worse and worse? That humanity is heading towards its end? In fact, these days it is common to have this vision, but calm down! The book “Factfulness”, by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, will prove you the opposite!

This book will show you how this notion is somewhat dramatized and, through data, how to have a correct worldview.

With it, you will learn to differentiate what is “drama” from what is fact. This helps to make better decisions, be alert to real dangers and possibilities, and avoid stressing over unnecessary things.

No wonder, this book is recommended by Bill Gates! Got interested to know more? Continue this reading with us!

“Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - and Why Things are Better this Way” is a work of Hans Rosling, in partnership with his son Ola Rosling and his daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund.

This work was published in 2018 and consists of 342 pages, divided into 11 chapters. They discuss why most of the population is ignorant when it comes to global issues, and how to solve this problem.

The book was even recommended by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates:

 “The world would be a better place if literally millions of people read this book. I give my highest recommendation.”

Who are Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund?

Hans Rosling was a Swedish physician, academic, statistician and public speaker responsible for founding, together with his son and daughter-in-law, the Gapminder Foundation.

He taught financial institutions, corporations, and non-governmental organizations, and presented ten TED Talks, which were attended more than 35 million times.

Ola Rosling, son of Hans, was responsible for developing the ignorance tests of the Gapminder Foundation – which he co-founded and is currently a director.

He developed all the material used by Hans in his lectures and TED Talks. In addition, he was the creator of the famous “bubble graphs” and the Trendalyzer tool used to date by millions of students around the world.

The Swedish received several awards for his work, including the Résumé Super-communicator Award and the Niras International Integrated Development Prize in 2016.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund is a sociologist and co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation, where she assisted in the creation of all material used by Hans and the interface of the Trendalyzer tool. At Gapminder, she developed new free teaching materials, generating Dollar Street, the subject of his 2017 TED Talk.

Anna has also received several awards for her work, such as the Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award and the Résumé Super-communicator Award in 2017.

It is recommended for individuals who care about the world we live in and want to let go of instincts that hold us to a clear view of the facts.

If you want to get a better comprehension about people’s behavior and their world conception, changing your mindset and stopping wasting time with useless things, this book is for you!

The world is not as bad as the media makes it seem;

Ignorance about the reality of the world is very common;

Our brain prefers to work with dramatized conceptions of facts;

There are mechanisms to get rid of these conceptions and reach a more realistic notion of things;

It is easier to be guided by the majority;

Growth does not happen regularly and unbridled;

It is important to put things in proportion and perspective;

Generalize and categorize does not produce good results;

A situation needs to be viewed from many different angles for better analysis;

The blame for things is hardly a person or group of people, but a more complex system;

No need to act immediately and recklessly, urgency also distorts our view;

The world needs people with a more realistic worldview;

This view is important regarding different aspects of our lives;

Many areas need people who have this more realistic view.

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People, in general, tend to like to divide all kinds of things into two different groups, which are often in conflict. This is especially true to the division of the world between ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘rich’ and ‘poor’.

But this is not what the data tells us. The reality is that based on official data, the world can be divided into four income levels, based on how many dollars a person lives per day: $ 2 or less, $2 - $8, $8 - $32, and $32 onwards.

Contrary to popular belief, most of the population lives on both average levels, and only a small part live in absolute poverty or extreme wealth. What should be done is to use mechanisms to warn about when a story has this polarized view, with a gap between the extremes.

For this, the author teaches to control these symptoms of the “separation instinct” with three simple methods:

Beware of the distorted, superior view of reality. Always look for the majority.

This chapter of the book “Factfulness” is about how we tend to always notice the bad much more than the good. According to research by the authors Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, most people believe that the world is getting worse and worse.

But the data show that is not quite so. What happens is that we have an extremely negative view of just what’s bad happening now, in the present. On the other hand, when you put the present in its historical context, you can see how much things are getting better.

In addition, the view presented by the media is also distorted so that the “bad” outweighs the “good”. By this way, most people find it is empathetic to believe that the world is getting better when there are still so many bad things going on.

Understand that it is more difficult to receive the good, as they occur more gradually;

Convince yourself that things can be both bad and good than before;

Be wary of the idea of a “glorified” past that runs away from reality.

The third major misconception facing humanity is the idea that the world’s population is only growing. In fact, the population is growing, but the addition of the word “only” gives the sense that if nothing is done, that number will continue to grow wildly.

Imagine a graph that only follows eternally straight. The truth is that this growth should not be seen as a straight line, but rather as a graph that has curves, ups, and downs.

This data depends on many external issues to exist. The world shows that more and more people are moving towards a balance in terms of the number of people living on the planet.

Growth, whatever it is, in a straight line is very rare, and one should beware of this assumption. To control the “straight line instinct”, remember that there are lines of various shapes.

Human brains are equipped with attention filters that decide which information to process and which to ignore.

The three instincts already mentioned by the book “Factfulness” are examples of things that go through these filters. Such filters tend to pay more attention to things that make the most impact, that is, more ‘dramatic’.

The media simply will not bother to publish stories that will not pass our attention filters. Therefore, it stirs what triggers reactions and most holds our attention: fear.

Fear can be helpful if directed at the right things. However, one must pay attention to the distinction of what is frightening and what is really dangerous. Only what is really dangerous presents a real risk, depending on your exposure to it, other than what only makes you afraid.

An important guideline is never to make decisions while panicking because fear makes us see things distorted.

The human being tends to let things take on exaggerated proportions.

The authors Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund say that we must beware of solitary information, especially when it comes to numbers.

Before deciding if the number given in that information is important, you should always compare it with others. This, therefore, when put in context, its meaning can change completely.

Also, you need to divide it by quantities in order to find out the average, or what part of a whole it represents.

To regulate this instinct for greatness, always put everything in proportion.

Everybody generalizes and categorizes automatically, unconsciously. The problem is that it also helps to distort our worldview by making us jump to conclusions that are usually wrong.

What must be done to avoid this distortion is to question these categories that we have created ourselves. Always look for:

Differences between points placed within the same group;

Similarities between points placed in different groups,

These tips from the book “Factfulness” will help you generate better categories.

Be careful with “most”. Always work with more accurate percentages, as “majority” means only more than “half”. Also, work with the exceptions, like these, as they are usually more shocking, eventually stand out.

This chapter addresses the idea that innate characteristics determine the future of people, countries, cultures, and religions.

Nowadays, the notion of seeing things as unchanging blinds us to all the revolutionary transformations happening around us.

It must be acknowledged that some things seem to be constant just because change happens slowly. Understand that slow changes are still changes that may one day lead to something great.

Also, keeping track of all the small changes and news, and comparing them with the past are also ways to get rid of this idea.

There are two main reasons why people often focus on only one perspective when it comes to understanding the world: political and professional ideology.

It is important to recognize that a single perspective on something can limit your imagination. You have to look at a situation from different angles to understand it better.

To make this happen, surround yourself with people who disagree with your opinions and can test them to find your weaknesses, as well as people who have different views that can help you solve a problem.

Simple ideas and solutions should be studied with caution:

Commit to solving problems more fully and efficiently.

The journey to find a clear and simple reason why something bad happened is what makes us feel guilt. We like to believe that things happen simply because someone wanted them to happen. This prevents us from developing a true, fact-based understanding of the world.

We need to resist the temptation to point the finger and blame some individual or group of individuals. When you find someone to blame, stop thinking and don’t get to the bottom of the matter.

Usually, the “culprit” is something much more complex, a system-generated by multiple interconnected causes that we must understand in order to avoid future problems.

This is also when something good happens and someone is taken as a hero: wouldn’t the result be the same without that person?

In any case, always avoid looking for scapegoats.

When faced with decisions that must be made immediately, we end up triggering an urgent instinct that makes us think less critically, make decisions quickly, and act on time.

This trigger, no matter how hard it makes us act, forces us to make bad choices and go through unnecessary stress. And if fired too often, it makes us numb when something is really urgent.

So if you come across a situation where there is sense of urgency, Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund gives 4 tips:

Try to ask for more time and more information before making a decision;

Ask for access accurate and relevant data about the case;

Take care of predictions and analyze them to understand if they can be considered valid or not;

Worry about the side effects of your actions, always calculating the impact they will have.

In the last chapter of the book “Factfulness”, the authors decide to express how using all the points shown in the previous chapters can be helpful in your life!

When it comes to education, it is a fact that everyone should have access to updated, fact-based teaching structures. This is so that they can develop critical thinking and protect future generations from global ignorance.

For business, a right view of the world is useful in many ways: in marketing and sales, making investment decisions, or even hiring non-ignorant people.

The content presented above reflects the vision and critical analysis  of our writing team, respecting the fundamentals of intellectual  property in Brazil (article 8, item I). 
No part of the book is  being copied. They are unique and exclusive content, always giving  credit to the authors and indicating the link to purchase the complete  work. PocketBook4You respects the copyright code in accordance with  Brazilian law, Law 9.610 / 98. 
This content is the exclusive  property of PocketBook4You and is protected by Copyright Law in its  articles 46, I, (a) and its article 47, because it is not reproduction  and do not imply any discredit, on the contrary, the moral right is  protected and, as noted earlier, the reader receives a link to acquire  the work. Reproduction of this material without permission of the  company is prohibited.

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Discover in this Factfulness book summary the guidelines to change your view about the world, through a series of teachings that will show how specifics triggers can confuse our mind!

Factfulness - Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund.pdf

Discover here the guidelines to change your view about the world, through a series of teachings that will show how specifics triggers can confuse our mind about reality!

Factfulness - Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

Factfulness - Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Book Summary in PDF

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