In this blog post, we explore why we perceive the world more negatively than it truly is and examine a statistical perspective to correct this cognitive bias.
What book did Bill Gates gift to graduates?
A book once became a hot topic in Korean and international media due to Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. He is such a renowned bookworm that every summer vacation season, articles feature his recommended reading list. Since 2010, he has been recommending books that are good for graduates taking their first steps into society, specifically around May and June when American universities hold their graduations. In 2018, he went beyond recommending books and actually gifted a book to every graduate from every university and graduate school in the US. Anyone who verified their graduation this year and left their email address via Bill Gates’ blog, ‘Gates Notes’, could receive a free e-book copy.
That book was ‘Factfulness’ by Hans Rosling, a Swedish statistician and physician. The word ‘factfulness’ was coined for this book. Dr. Rosling explains its meaning in his work: “factfulness is the attitude of speaking based on facts verified in reality.” While expressing opinions is a personal freedom, they must be rooted in facts that can be verified in reality. The book’s subtitle is ‘Ten Reasons We Misunderstand the World and Why the World is Better Than You Think’. Not only did Bill Gates recommend it, but it was also gifted to all university and graduate school graduates in the US, propelling it to instant bestseller status. It has since been translated into Korean and gained a large readership.
Contrary to our beliefs, the world is getting better every day!
In this blog post, we’ll explore why the book’s author, Dr. Hans Rosling, strongly argues that the world is getting better every day, contrary to our common perception. Whether in lectures or his book, Dr. Rosling unfolds his narrative through a few simple questions. Let’s examine just three of the questions he posed. Since you only need to choose one answer from three options, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
1. What percentage of all one-year-old babies worldwide have received vaccines that prevent disease?
① 20% ② 50% ③ 80%
2. How has the global population living below the absolute poverty line changed over the past 20 years?
① Doubled. ② Remained similar. ③ Nearly halved.
3. Men currently aged 30 worldwide have received an average of 10 years of schooling. How many years of schooling did women of the same age receive on average?
① 9 years ② 6 years ③ 3 years
Looking at the answers in order: The answer to the question about the proportion of 1-year-old infants worldwide who have received vaccinations is “80% (③)”. The answer to the second question about how the global population living below the absolute poverty line has changed over the past 20 years is “has nearly halved (③)”. Finally, the answer to the question about how many years of schooling a 30-year-old woman received when a 30-year-old man received an average of 10 years is “9 years (①).”
Dr. Hans Rosling asked 12 similar questions to 12,000 people across 14 countries in 2017. What were the results? Surprisingly, the overall correct answer rate was only 16%. Not a single person among the 12,000 got all 12 questions right. And these were short questions where you only had to choose one answer from three options.
The correct answers to the 12 questions Dr. Hans Rosling asked are as follows. The percentage of girls in low-income countries completing primary school is now 60%. The global average life expectancy is 70 years. And the number of people dying annually from natural disasters has fallen by more than half over the past 100 years.
Solving all these problems reveals that the reality of the world we live in is better than people’s common knowledge suggests. So, did people with above-average education show better accuracy? The results tell a different story. Dr. Hans Rosling posed the same questions to university professors, corporate executives, investment bankers, senior government officials, politicians, journalists, and even Nobel laureates, yet the results remained consistent.
No group achieved a higher accuracy rate than the 33% chance of simply guessing one of the three options correctly. At this level, Dr. Hans Rosling often joked that it would be better to have a chimpanzee at the zoo solve the problems. The average correct answer rate (16%) for the 12 questions Dr. Rosling created means that almost everyone in the world views the world more negatively and hopelessly than it actually is. Why is that? Dr. Hans Rosling dedicated his life to changing people’s misguided perceptions of the world and the fixed notion that things are only getting worse. His unique background as a physician, public health expert, and statistician provided the foundation that allowed him to objectively assess the global situation based on accurate statistics. When analyzing various statistics—such as birth rates, mortality rates, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, gross national income (GNI) per capita, and school enrollment rates—provided by international organizations like the UN, WHO, and World Bank, as well as individual countries, it was clear the world was slowly but surely improving. The question “Why don’t people properly understand this?” was the backdrop that led him to begin his research in earnest.
Dr. Hans Rosling states there are twelve reasons why people view the world as more miserable and negative than it actually is. He labels each reason with names like the ‘Gap Instinct’, ‘Negativity Instinct’, ‘Linear Instinct’, and ‘Fear Instinct’. In this chapter, we will examine only a few of these, which he considers the most important reasons.
Let’s view the world based on accurate facts!
In the book’s preface, Dr. Hans Rosling reveals that when he was young, he believed people viewed the world as worse than it actually was because they lacked proper information about the changing world. For example, people live in the present but only hold situations (statistics) from 20-30 years ago in their minds. This is because the information acquired through schools and mass media does not accurately reflect today’s reality. Textbook content is outdated, and teachers often teach exactly what they learned in their youth. The world is steadily improving day by day, yet school education fails to properly reflect and teach about this changing world. The statistics teachers learned in university already dealt with situations from much earlier times. This applies not only to teachers but to people in all professions.
However, as he conducted his research, he realized that the root of these misguided biases wasn’t solely due to outdated knowledge. There were more significant influencing factors, most of which were related to fundamental human instincts. The first characteristic he identified was the ‘Gap Instinct’. Simply put, the Gap Instinct is the human tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them.” For example, it refers to categorizing countries on Earth as developed or developing nations.
Early in his lectures and book, he presents a graph. The vertical axis shows the survival rate of babies from birth to age 5, with rates approaching 100% as you move upward. The horizontal axis represents the number of children born per woman, decreasing as you move to the right. Countries positioned in the upper right corner of the graph have low birth rates and high child survival rates—that is, developed countries. Countries in the lower left corner have high birth rates but low survival rates—that is, developing countries. The graph in the book perfectly aligns with people’s common perception. Most developed countries cluster in the upper-right quadrant, while developing countries like China and India occupy the lower-left. Only a few nations sit in the middle ground.
Just as we’re about to conclude, “The world is divided into two: developed and developing countries,” an error occurs. Dr. Hans Rosling states: “This graph depicts the situation in 1965.” He then presents a new graph showing the near-real-time state in 2017, revealing that almost all countries are now positioned in the upper-right quadrant. China and India are also situated near the top-right corner. The fertility rate per woman has already dropped significantly in most countries, and children’s health has improved.
He pointed out that the approach of dividing the world’s nations into North America and Europe, some advanced countries in East Asia like Korea and Japan, and the rest as developing countries is dichotomous and out of touch with reality. While such a perspective might have been valid half a century ago, it is now an outdated viewpoint. The number of people living below the absolute poverty line, both in absolute numbers and as a relative proportion of the global population, is decreasing. He explains that 75% of the world’s population lives in middle-income countries where the average daily income ranges from $2 to $32.
Out of the total 7.5 billion people, 800 million belong to the so-called ‘Level 1’ with an average daily income below $2. Those in ‘Level 2,’ earning between $2 and $8, number 3.7 billion. The ‘Level 3’ group, earning between $8 and $32, comprises 2 billion people. Approximately 800 million people belong to ‘Level 4,’ earning over $32 per day. Earning $32 daily translates to an annual income of roughly $11,000. While this may seem small to Koreans, who have just surpassed a national income of $30,000, it represents a standard of living enjoyed by only one-tenth of the global population.
He emphasizes the need to move beyond the binary classification of the world into developed and developing countries, advocating for a more diverse categorization of nations. This perspective greatly aids in understanding other countries. Dividing the world solely into developed and developing nations risks dismissing all developing countries except the most advanced as uniformly destitute. However, categorizing the world’s nations more diversely allows for a more accurate and objective view.
To someone in a Level 4 country earning over $10,000 annually, people earning $2, $8, or $16 a day might all seem equally poor. But he argues that even reaching Level 3, where people earn $16 a day, allows for the installation of running water, eliminating the need to walk tens of kilometers to fetch water. Transportation also improves—at minimum, people can ride motorcycles to commute to better-paying jobs farther away and send their children to high school. In other words, simply reaching Level 3 enables people to plan for a better future and work towards it.
In fact, Dr. Hans Rosling successfully convinced international organizations to adopt this perspective. After delivering 14 lectures at the World Bank over 17 years, repeatedly emphasizing this concept, the World Bank officially stopped using the terms “developing countries” and “developed countries.” Instead, it adopted the four-tier classification system proposed by Dr. Rosling, ranging from Level 1 to Level 4.
Dr. Hans Rosling passed away in 2017, the year his book Factfulness was published. He dedicated his life to changing people’s misconceptions. Learning that he worked on the book until just before his death made me read it with even greater focus. I came to understand his conviction that when we view the world we live in based on accurate facts, the world can become a better place. This is precisely why I emphasized the need for accurate ‘statistics’ and the importance of ‘facts’ when discussing birth rates and unemployment rates earlier.
