0:00 In the last twenty years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has… what do you think?0:07 Almost doubled, remained more or less the same, or almost halved?0:12 The answer is C.0:13 It has almost HALVED.0:14 This is one of the most basic, huge facts about the world, and most people — journalists, politicians, Nobel laureates — get it wrong.0:24 It’s a perfect follow-up to last week, when we talked about 'Sapiens' and the power of shared stories.0:31 It turns out one of the most powerful, and misleading, stories we tell ourselves is that the world is getting worse.0:39 Hans Rosling’s book 'Factfulness' is the antidote to that story.0:43 Rosling was a Swedish physician and public health legend, and he spent his life trying to get people to see the world as it actually is, using data.0:54 He argues that our brains are programmed with ten dramatic instincts that systematically distort our worldview.1:01 It’s not that we’re stupid; it’s that our brains evolved for urgent, tribal survival, not for accurately interpreting global statistics.1:11 The result is what he calls an “overdramatic worldview.” It’s stressful, it’s wrong, and it makes us terrible at solving real problems.1:20 So let's talk about a couple of these instincts.1:23 The first, and maybe the biggest, is the GAP instinct.1:27 This is our tendency to divide things into two distinct, conflicting groups with a huge gap in between.1:34 Rich and poor.1:35 The West and the rest.1:37 Us and them.1:38 It’s simple, it’s dramatic, and it’s almost always wrong.1:42 Rosling shows how that old idea of a "developing" world and a "developed" world just doesn't exist anymore.1:49 The vast majority of humanity, maybe seventy-five percent, now lives in the middle.1:55 Not rich, not poor, but somewhere on a continuum.1:58 He replaces the two-bucket model with four simple income levels, based on what people can afford.2:05 And when you see the world that way… everything changes.2:09 You stop seeing a world of misery and start seeing a world of incremental, but massive, progress.2:15 The other big one is the NEGATIVITY instinct.2:19 This is our tendency to notice the bad more than the good.2:23 And you can’t really blame us, right?2:25 The news cycle is a firehose of bad news.2:28 Plane crashes, not the thousands of planes that land safely.2:32 Financial crises, not the slow, steady growth of the global economy.2:37 Rosling’s point isn’t that we should ignore bad news or pretend suffering doesn't exist.2:43 It’s that bad news is sudden and loud, while progress is slow and quiet.2:48 You never see a headline that says, “Number of children who died before their fifth birthday fell by another four thousand today.” But that’s been happening, day after day, for decades.3:01 So our brains get a constant feed of drama and miss the biggest story of all: the slow, steady escape from the worst of human suffering.3:10 So what does it all add up to?3:12 Here’s the part that really got me.3:15 Rosling argues that this distorted, overdramatic view isn’t just making you sad or anxious.3:21 It’s actively HARMFUL.3:23 It makes businesses miss out on the biggest new markets in history — the billions of people in those middle-income levels who now want washing machines and smartphones.3:34 It makes activists and aid organizations focus on the wrong problems.3:39 It makes us, in our daily lives, feel hopeless and cynical when we should actually feel a sense of incredible possibility.3:47 Our instincts are costing us money, misdirecting our best efforts, and robbing us of a true picture of our own world.3:56 So here are three things from 'Factfulness' you can actually use this week.4:01 First, when you hear people talking about “the poor” or “rich countries,” stop.4:06 Remember the four income levels.4:08 The world isn't two buckets.4:10 Look for the majority in the middle.4:13 Second, expect bad news.4:15 Let it happen.4:15 But to balance it, find a chart of a slow, positive trend.4:20 Child mortality, literacy, access to clean water.4:23 Look at the long-term trend, not just the daily drama.4:27 Third, and this is a big one, beware of straight lines.4:30 When you see a chart of something scary, like population growth, going straight up, don't just assume it will continue forever.4:39 Ask what could make the line bend.4:42 For population, it was getting people out of extreme poverty.4:46 The most effective way to slow population growth wasn't coercion, it was development.4:52 'Factfulness' isn't a book about being optimistic.4:55 It’s about being realistic.4:57 It’s about replacing our dramatic instincts with a habit of fact-based thinking.5:03 It changes how you read the news, how you think about your job, and how you see the seven billion other people on this planet.5:11 Your brain wants a simple, dramatic story.5:14 The data tells a more complicated, and far more hopeful, one.
