A few things I picked up from Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness.”
We have a tendency to expect graphs to go gradually up or down in a line. That’s wrong. I think that statement is something I should be more conscious of.
“If you keep saving poor children, you’ll kill the planet by causing overpopulation.” “Saving poor children just increases the population” sounds correct, but the opposite is true. Delaying the escape from extreme poverty just increases the population.
He’s definitely onto something. Higher education does curb exterme population. But! Why do we have to provide them contraceptives though? If you don’t have sex, women won’t conceive children. On one hand this is an issue about “education,” but on the other hand this is about self-restraint and not caving into your primal desires.
Besides, who’s going to provide, if the children don’t contribute to the household? And who’s going to mine cobalt, crawl into caves?
Okay, he’s giving examples for straight lines, S-curves and such but where is the “trick” to recognize whether the prognose would go in a straight line or not? The initial claim of this book was “this book is about the world, and how to understand it.” “You’ll do better because I will have shared with you a set of simple thinking tools. These will help you get the big picture right, and improve your sense of how the world works, without you having to learn all the details”
Okay. How do I do it then? Where exactly is the “thinking tool”? There’s too much hindsight packaged as foresight.
She explains that not painting the walls can be a strategic decision in countries on Levels 2 and 3. It’s not that they can’t afford the paint. Flaking walls keep away the richer patients and their time-consuming demands for costly treatments, allowing hospitals to use their limited resources to treat more people in more cost-effective ways
Later he mentions a woman, who’s late to catch up with the group dashing towards an elevator and putting her leg in. Little did she know that the elevator in India don’t have sensors to open the door. If she had only watched some Liveleak videos… As they say, “assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups.”
What does “the majority” mean? Always ask for a percentage. It could mean 51% or 99%.
And each of the 50 countries south of the Sahara reduced its child mortality faster than Sweden ever did. How can that not be counted as incredible progress?
The question is: Did they do it on their own? Through their own policies, not dictated by the Westerners? And did they accomplished this through their own technology and knowhow? It’s commendable that they have made tremendous achievements, no question. However were these accomplishments achieved with the help of the evil colonial powers?
Rosling gives an anecdote with his encounter of the prime minister of Mozambique. It basically boils down that not every progress can be measured in numbers. “The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone.”
The book makes me wonder if I’m suffering from some kind of bias as well. For example Goldman Sachs projects the emerging stockmarkets to overtake the US by 2030. While this is a projection, it’s still based on numbers and statistical models by extremely smart people. The GDP growth forecasts looks even favorable for the Euro Area and for Germany. My gut feeling is clearly saying, no, screaming: No! There’s clearly a gap between what I’m seeing, the connections my mind is making and the numbers. I’m curious how that’s going to pan out.
People like me, who believe this, are often tempted to argue that democracy leads to, or is even a requirement for, other good things, like peace, social progress, health improvements, and economic growth. But here’s the thing, and it is hard to accept: the evidence does not support this stance.
Rosling also makes the risky point that a liberal democracy may not automatically be necessary for prosperity. Risky, because nowadays you cannot claim something like this in an oh-so-free-society we live in. We actually witness this in Singapore. Singapore is a prosperous state that’s also in the iron grip of the state. However what many seem to ignore is that you cannot compare Singapore with big states i.e. not city states. Doing all this is only feasible because of the the dimension the Singaporean Government is controlling. So yes, you can prosper even if you aren’t living in a liberal democracy as long as your territory and citizens aren’t getting out of hands. Nevertheless, I still believe that you can only have a healthy market in a free society.