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

Journalists, Activists, Politicians
Journalists, activists, and politicians are also humans. They are not lying to
us. They suffer from a dramatic worldview themselves. Like everyone else,
they should regularly check and update their worldview and develop factful
ways of thinking.
There are further actions that journalists can take to help them to present a
less distorted worldview to the rest of us. Setting events in their historical
context can help to keep them in proportion. Some journalists, aware of the

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distorting influence of negative news, are outlining new standards for more
constructive news, with the goal of changing bad news habits and making
journalism more meaningful. It’s hard to tell at this point how much impact
they will have.
Ultimately, it is not journalists’ role, and it is not the goal of activists or
politicians, to present the world as it really is. They will always have to
compete to engage our attention with exciting stories and dramatic narratives.
They will always focus on the unusual rather than the common, and on the
new or temporary rather than slowly changing patterns.
I cannot see even the highest-quality news outlets conveying a neutral and
nondramatic representative picture of the world, as statistics agencies do. It
would be correct but just too boring. We should not expect the media to move
very far in that direction. Instead it is up to us as consumers to learn how to
consume the news more factfully, and to realize that the news is not very
useful for understanding the world.
Your Organization
Once a year, the ministers of health from every country come together at the
World Health Assembly. They plan health systems and compare health
outcomes of different countries and then they have coffee. One time, the
minister of health from Mexico whispered in my ear during a coffee break, “I
care a lot about Mexico’s average number, one day every year. That is today.
All the other 364 days I only care about the differences within Mexico.”
In this book, I have discussed ignorance of facts on a global level. I think
there must be systematically ignored facts on the country level too, and in
every community and every organization.
So far we have only tried a few local fact questions, but it seems like they
follow a very similar pattern to the global facts we have tested more widely.
In Sweden, for example, we asked:
Today, 20 percent of Swedes are older than 65. What will the number be 10 years from
now:
A: 20 percent
B: 30 percent
C: 40 percent
The correct answer is 20 percent—no change—but only 10 percent of
Swedes picked that answer. That is devastating ignorance about a basic fact
that is crucial in our Swedish debate about planning for the next ten years. I
think it is because people have heard a lot about the aging population over the

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last 20 years, when the number did in fact increase, and then they assume a
straight line.
There are so many more local and subject area fact questions we would
love to try. Do people in your city know the basic proportions and trends that
are shaping the future of the place they live in? We don’t know, because we
haven’t tested it. But most likely: no.
What about your niche of expertise? If you work on marine life around
Scandinavia, do your colleagues know the basic facts about the Baltic Sea? If
you work in forestry, do your colleagues know if wildfires are getting more or
less common? Do they know whether the latest fires caused more or less
damage than those in the past?
We think there are endless such ignorances to discover if the fact questions
are asked. Which is exactly why we suggest that as step one. You can hunt for
ignorance in your own organization using the same methods we have used.
Start simply by asking what are the most important facts in your organization
and how many people know them.
Sometimes people get nervous about this. They think their colleagues and
friends will be offended if they start checking their knowledge, and will not
appreciate being proved wrong. My experience is the opposite. People like it
a lot. Most people find it inspiring to realize what the world looks like. Most
people are eager to start learning. Testing their knowledge, if it is done in a
humble way, can release an avalanche of curiosity and new insights.