Factfulness

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

What we have here is a crusader crusading against ignorance. An admirable quest and it might eventually have some effect on the enormous amount of stupidity that currently blankets the world.

He starts (from the excerpt) by talking about the gap instinct:

I’m  talking  about  that  irresistible  temptation  we  have  to  divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap —a huge chasm of injustice— in between.

A huge chasm of injustice? That sounds like SJW (Social Justice Warrior) bullshit. A huge gap in knowledge and understanding, or a huge gap in social evolution maybe. Whatever, remove the irritating phrase "—a huge chasm of injustice—" and the statement is fine. We do tend to divide the world into two camps.

However, he just uses this as an example to show that what we decide is often based on incorrect information. One common division we make is between Western Civilization and the rest of the world, the uncivilized heathen. How do you classify a country as being good or bad? One way is by comparing infant mortality. Here's one chart:

Children and Survival

Looks pretty clear cut, all the heathen are living in the big box, all the good Christians are in the small box. But then he shows us another chart.

Children and Survival 2017

Not so clear cut anymore, is it? Problem is that the first graph is from 1965 and since then the world has changed and it has changed for the better. I suspect this may be why we have so many SJW's running around protesting about nonsense. They don't have any real issues to fight against, but they are still people and they still want a cause to believe in. If the leaders of the pack can't provide them with a worthwhile cause, they'll invent one of their own from whatever they find lying around.

Via Uniberp