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Factfulness

by Hans Rosling

★★★★☆ 4.35 (203 448 ratings)
2018 · 352 pages · ~5h 52m read · Nonfiction

Hans Rosling, along with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, offers a radical new explanation of why we are wrong about the world. He identifies ten instincts that distort our perspective-from our tendency to divide the world into two camps to the way we consume media. Through data-driven insights and personal anecdotes from his time as a global health expert, Rosling reveals that the world is in a much better state than we think, providing a more hopeful, fact-based worldview.

A popular book with millions of readers worldwide.

Topic: HistoryStyle: Practical
economicssociologyscience

Notable Quotes

"There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear."
"People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. 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 having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful."
"Forming your worldview by relying on the media would be like forming your view about me by looking only at a picture of my foot."

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