Factfulness: by Anna and Hans

Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

We have recently started with a new Book Club at Wingify, we read 1 book every month, make notes and discuss our views and what we feel about the book later on a google meet call, so following are my notes from the books, my writing style for these notes is more of a gist style summary.

Richer countries are generally healthier or healthier countries are richer? What made them rich? Or what made them healthy?

People in general have a predisposition that the world is in a grave state than it actually is, even without knowing the facts. Why? - outdated knowledge? No. Our cravings for drama leads us to believe into what news shows up without getting in depth facts. It almost works as an optical illusion. What we need to know is how the illusion works !

Division of developed and developing is not valid in the 21st century, 91% of the world lives in either middle-income or high-income countries. Instead we can divide them into 4 income levels based on $/day : <$2 (1billion), $2 - $8 (3 billion), $8 - $32 (2 billion), > $32 (1 billion) The so-called gap between rich and poor is actually a smooth slope, with more people on the upper range than we think.

The statement “men are better at maths than women” can be easily disapproved of with a range graph and a proper scale - there is a huge overlap. Then why is this statement still used by many? the existence of extremities also doesn’t give a clear view since a huge majority does not exist in those extremities

With proof, almost every country has improved in last few decades - To see this growth over a period of 50 years one must have lived at least that long to say and believe that the world is improving, otherwise the young believe the conditions to be getting worse since easy spread of negative news in today’s world and not being able to visualise the progress made by countries over a long period of time.

The UN data on increase in population predicts a slow growth till 2100 as compared to the previous centuries, what can be the factors that might trigger a different trend that would lead to a faster growth in population? And what can we do (if possible) to prevent those triggers from activating?11`

Fear instinct is quite strong, but it is very powerful if it leads to collaboration of people around the world to resolve the issues. For Eg, the Chicago Convention of commercial airlines. Risk != fear, risk = danger * exposure

“In the deepest poverty you should never do anything perfectly, if you do you are stealing resources from where they can be better used”

The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone.

At level 1-2 the main focus should be to provide education, nurse education and vaccinations.

A lonely number rarely is enough to deduce results, a comparison is always required to deduce better.

If you are wrong about certain facts, it is probably true that you have a very limited idea about the ecosystem around it, which could be a potential investment opportunity for you or your business.

The values we claim to be religious or country specific like patriarchy were found in countries like Sweden too, only when it was at level 2 around 60 years ago .