Factfulness

Entertaining, enlightening, if somewhat repetitive book which illustrates quite conclusively that most of us live with a very outdated view of the world, reinforced by media desperate to get our attention by dramatizing and sensationalizing stories that distort the slow steady improvement in key areas. One eye-opening example: that the number of people in the world in extreme poverty is now down to 800 million. The book is full of such facts, and it isn't a rose-tinted view. The authors don't ignore the negative, they just balance it against the inescapable positives of slowly improving circumstances. Recommended.

It was very resourceful to read this book and to adjust our tendency to bias facts due to exposure in mass media as we are living in the age of technology, fast-spread messages and news, that everything comes in a snap and we absorb them without filtering the knowledge through our brain first.

In my opinion, Hans Rosling has done perfectly well in awing readers with his straight forward and engaging, simple but clear language to deliver us the main theme throughout the book–we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, yet also by the history of humankind. It highlights the point where we should learn to view things in an up-to-date manner, and rather not judged by the fact or so-called leaps in technology advancement we've made–especially for the western countries, that western still dominates the world in a “privileged” way, ahead of all its rivals. Indeed, it continues to emphasise on the misjudge in facts, mostly based on the old facts opinions that were embedded among us and harvested to other ones as we grow up. Our world view is outdated. And yet we shall learn to change our view on that.

It is an incredibly useful book in proving common misconceptions wrong, alongside the facts and the uses of data that helps to establish another new level of understanding in the current global situation. Worthy to read.

Guter Ansatz. Die globale Welt macht eine globale Bildung nötig, die die Dinge sieht, wie sie sind. Eigentlich trivial, aber noch lange nicht weit genug in den Bildungseinrichtungen etabliert. Statistik als Therapie haben wir alle nötig.

Das Buch hat leider kaum Reflexion über seine eigenen Prämissen und Werte, die dem eher optimistischen Blick auf die Welt zugrunde liegen. Hier liegt ein recht klassisches Fortschrittsdenken zugrunde, das aus dem 18. und 19. Jahrhundert kommt: Ökonomischer Fortschritt, technischer Rationalismus etc. wird zu einer „glücklichen Welt“ führen. Fragen der „Kultur“ fallen dabei unter den Tisch. Wer Kulturpessimist ist wird durch das Buch nicht glücklicher. Nur weil es mehr Gitarren gibt, mehr Kinofilme und wissenschaftliche Publikationen pro Jahr, heißt das nicht, dass es aufwärts geht mit Kultur und Wissenschaft. Hier wird implizit Quantität als einziger Wert vorausgesetzt.

Dennoch: Für den nicht-geistigen Bereich des Menschen kann man seinen Blick optimieren mit diesem Buch.

On my Books Every Human Should Read list. Fascinating, written with expertise, experience and humility. I don't understand all the reviews using the word “condescending” - I didn't see that (with the exception of one rather shocking anecdote from when he was a new graduate). He frequently shares polling data that shows ignorance on the part of highly educated people, but that's the data he's using to reveal the problem. He also freely shared his own mistakes.

Reading at the end of 2022, I was struck by the fact that his number one practical concern (in 2017) was a global pandemic (not that he was the only one - this has long been known to be inevitable). As much as the world could have benefitted from his wisdom in 2020, maybe it's better he didn't see how badly it was handled...

What I enjoyed most was how infinitely practical this was. Lots of charts, the fallacies are presented clearly, and each chapter ends with a bullet point list to solidify the concepts he's described with personal stories. This book is neither boring or clinical, and it's an excellent antidote for the insidious, Western/Euro-centrist thinking that's both prevalent and rarely remarked upon.

If you liked this book and have kids, I'd also recommend Raising Critical Thinkers by Julie Bogart. For more positivity on the world, Humankind by Rutger Bregman, although that one's still in my tsundoku pile.

This book is very frustrating at times but overall the message is great and made me think and that's all I can ask for I suppose.

My main complaints are..

I almost dropped it in the first half because of the constant baffling preconceived (and racist) notions he keeps mentioning european/american people particularly his students have. For a while it seemed very aimed at a western audience in that regard but I'm glad a stuck with it. Though it really opened my eyes on how ignorant the average western person is about “non-western” countries. Ironically the chapters that were meant to make the (western) reader think “oh things aren't so bad in the world over!” made me despair for the western world lol anyway...

Second thing is a lot of the “things are better than you think!” talk is..semantics. For example he says most of the word is middle class and a small part of the population is actually extremely poor! Sounds great until you read his definition of middle class which sounds like hell lol. Or the talk about how certain things like vaccination rates or percentage of girls getting an education for example are getting higher. Well duh, they weren't about to go lower?

This all makes it sound very negative and yet I give it 4 stars. I agreed with the bulk of what he said and the core message of fact checking and not falling into what he calls a dramatic word view. We're getting an overload of skewed info everyday and it's important to actually sit down and cross check before falling into hopelessness. And then fall into it anyway probably because the world really is kinda fucked. Just a bit less so thank you might think.

Professor of International Health Hans Rosling shares what he has learned about what people think they know about global trends about longevity, girls in school, the world's population, poverty, deaths from natural disasters, electrification, and endangered animals; everything people think they know, he tells us, is wrong. In all of these measures of quality of life, things are getting better than we think.

And why are we so wrong about these things? He tells us about ten instincts that greatly distort our perspective, including our tendencies to take in information from media where fear is the driving force behind much reported, to divide the world into two extremes instead of looking at the middle ground, and to believe things are getting worse rather than better.

A fascinating book. Thank you to all who recommended this book to me.

I disliked this book when I've started reading it, specially due to its condescending tone, but the last chapters have changed my mind.
What is Factfulness about? The world can be bad and getting better at the same time. We tend to have an overdramatic worldview, which may affect our decisions and might get us stressed and worried about the wrong things.
I believe that I tend to avoid most of the dramatic instincts referred in the book. However, I have a very strong negativity instinct which kept me having internal discussions with the author and I'm still not convinced about some of the issues, namely the extreme poverty/ poverty question.

I mostly enjoyed learning about the four levels of income as I had an outdated view of the world and was still splitting it into developed and developing countries.
In this approach, the world is divided in four income level:
- Level 1: People living with less than 2 $/day
- Level 2: People living with 2 - 8 $/say
- Level 3: People living with 8-32 $/day
- Level 4: People living with >32 $/day

Although it is very comforting to know that only 10% of the world population is living in level 1 - Extreme poverty - I have trouble seeing “most people are living on the two middle levels, where people have most of their basic human needs met” as exciting news. Why? Because all 3 levels are below what is considered the US poverty line, which means that 86% of the world population is living under this line.
I do understand that is a huge difference between the 3 levels of income, specially for the people living in level 1, and I do see the evolution of people living on those levels as a positive fact that should be celebrated. My main question is: if the world keeps getting better when is the extreme poverty line going to be reviewed? When there is no more people living in level 1?
As you can see, my negative instinct is prevailing in this subject and I will keep trying to learn more about this.

Another issue for me was the question regarding the critically endangered species. In 1996 tigers, giant pandas and black rhinos were critically endangered and today they are not. This does not mean the world is getting better, this means that awareness and the measures taken to protect these species have worked.
By using this information the author is playing with the data to support his view, as all the bad guys referred in the book do. There is no more information regarding animal conservation on the book and the main purpose was to explain that it is possible to change the course of the events. However, the questionnaire was used to show that the world is a lot better than we might think, and by using the change on the conservation status of theses species the readers might be led to believe the same is happening in other species when it is not truth.
Between 1997 and 2020 the number of threatened species has increased. In the latest version for 2020, more than 15,400 animals were listed as threatened - almost double the number of 2007
(https://www.statista.com/chart/17122/number-of-threatened-species-red-list/).

I'm struggling between the 3 and 4 stars but I do recommend the book.

“Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview.”
~
What an eye opening book. An informal read full of interesting information. Before reading this book I would say I had a pretty good grasp on the general trends of the globe, but after reading Factfullness I realized I was basing my opinions and information on outdated facts and I was very far from the truth. The world is doing quite well and Hans does a wonderful job of relaying this idea with different topics and facts. He keeps you engaged and moves through his ideas in an almost story-like manner.

The book was great. It showed me of how wrong I was about many things. And also that I am not alone.
I am also guilty of thinking in labels like developed and undeveloped world - even though the large majority is somewhere in between. It is eye-opening and also reminds us to constantly check our knowledge about the world. With the Internet, we have access to everything within seconds and we should take advantage of it.

Two main takeaways from this book:

* Developing/Developed world categorization is bullshit - instead divide the world into four levels of income.

Level 1 (poorest) - approx. 1 billion people
Level 2 (lower-to-middle income) - approx. 3 billion people
Level 3 (middle-to-upper income) - approx. 2 billion people
Level 4 (richest) - approx. 1 billion people

* Dollar Street - an amazing idea of seeing people living the same kind of life across countries on the same income level. So keep in mind that affluent Africans are living as lavishly as affluent Americans and poorest Indians the same as poorest French, on an equal basis of income.

Despite some reservations, I would recommend this to my pessimist friends who think that the world is just doomed. It probably is - but it's also getting better.

Čekání se vyplatilo. Nakladatelství Melvil opět odvedlo dobrou práci a kniha se krásně četla od začátku do konce. Hans Rosling přesně trefil i do mého starého vnímání světa, které se už sakra posunulo k lepšímu a já jsem rád, že teď tyto znalosti můžu předávat dál a bavit se o tom s lidmi. Je to skvělé téma k debatě téměř při jakékoliv příležitosti a vy tak můžete oslňovat ostatní svým intelektem :)

One of the best books I've ever read!
I tried to write a short review doing this book justice, but its impossible. If you're doubting to buy this book? DO IT!
I honestly believe this is a book everyone should read at least once and Rosling makes it super easy; easy language, the chapters are perfect length and even line spacing is optimized for easy reading.