Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

I’m a very serious “possibilist.” That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is hav

The fear instinct is so strong that it can make people collaborate across the world, to make the greatest progress. It’s so strong it can also remove 40 million noncrashing aircraft from our field of sight each year.

here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.

When seemingly impregnable logic is combined with good intentions, it becomes nearly impossible to spot the generalization error.

Factfulness is … recognizing when we get negative news, and remembering that information about bad events is much more likely to reach us.

Big change is always difficult to imagine. But it is definitely possible, and I think it will happen, for two simple reasons. First: a fact-based worldview is more useful for navigating life, just like an accurate GPS is more useful for finding your way in the city. Second, and probably more important: a fact-based worldview is more comfortable. It

We tend to assume that all items on a list are equally important, but usually just a few of them are more important than all the others put together. Whether it is causes of death or items in a budget, I simply focus first on understanding those that make up 80 percent of the total. Before I spend time on the smaller ones, I ask myself: Where are t

we should look at the systems instead of looking for someone to blame when things go wrong.

Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.