“When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world's population lives in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, investment bankers, and Nobel laureates,” says Hans Rosling . In his book, Factfulness, he claims our problem is that we know what we don't know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. 1
It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better shape than we might think. That doesn't mean there aren't real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threatens us most.
In large part, it is because of our negativity thoughts: our instinct to notice the bad more than the good. There are three things going on here: the misremembering of the past; selective reporting by journalists and activists; and the feeling that as long as things are bad it's heartless to say they are getting better. 1
We are subjected to never-ending cascades of negative news from across the world: wars, famines, natural disasters, political mistakes, corruption, budget cuts, diseases, mass layoffs, acts of terror, Journalists who reported flights that didn't crash or crops that didn't fail would quickly lose their jobs. Stories about gradual improvements rarely make the front page even when they occur on a dramatic scale and impact millions of people.
One example: In the United states, the violent crime rate has been on a downward trend since 1990. Just under 14.5 million crimes were reported in 1990. By 2016 that figure was well under 9.5 million. Each time something horrific or shocking happened, which was pretty much every year, a crisis was claimed. The majority of people, the vast majority of the time, believe that violent crime is getting worse.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area. Whenever there is a newsworthy event such as a crime or accident in the area, I can see immediate coverage on 5 different TV stations. The wonder is that all the reporters covering an event can find a spot that avoids reporters from other channels providing the same coverage. Talk about over-saturation on tragic events!
Eight miles underwater, a seismic slip-rupture event took place on March 11, 2011. It moved the Japanese main island eight feet eastward and generated a tsunami that reached the coast one hour later, killing roughly 18,000 people. The tsunami also was higher than the wall that was built to protect the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The province was flooded with water and the world's news was flooded with fear of physical harm and radioactive contamination.
People escaped the province as fast as hey could, but 1,600 more prople died. It was not the leaking radioactivity that killed them. Not one person has yet been reported as having died from the very thing that people were fleeing from. These 1,600 people died because they escaped. There were mainly old people who died because of the mental and physical stresses of the evacuation itself or of life in evacuation shelters. It wasn't radioactivity, but the fear of radioactivity that killed them. 1
We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems, fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality and more
After 9/11, many people shifted from planes to cars because of fear of flying. The shift lasted for about one year in the United States. Gerd Gigerenzer analyzed automobile fatalities for five years prior to the September 11 attacks and five years after. He found that fatalities soared on American roads after September 2011 and settled back to normal in September 2002., As a result of the surge in traffic patterns, he concluded that an additional 1,595 died; more than half the death toll from the terrorist attacks. 2
Fear can be useful, but only if it is directed at the right things. The fear instinct is a terrible guide for understanding the world. It makes us give our attention to the unlikely dangers that we are most afraid of and neglect what is actually most likely.
Rosling presents these data on some terrifying events: natural disasters (0.1 percent of all deaths), plane crashes (0.001 percent), murders (0.7 percent), nuclear leaks (0 percent), and terrorism (0.05 percent). Not a one of these kills more than 1 percent of the people who die each year, and still they get enormous media attention. We should of course work to reduce these death rates as well. Still, this helps to show just how much the fear instinct distorts our focus. To understand what we should truly be scared of, and how to truly protect our loved ones from danger, we should suppress our fear instinct and measure the actual death tolls.
Another person saying that things aren't as bad as we are led to believe is Gregg Easterbrook in his book, It's Better Than It Looks. 3
He reports, most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems, fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality and more.
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Yet this narrative misses something important by almost every meaningful measure. The modern world is better than it has ever been. In the United States, disease, crime, and most forms of pollution are in long term decline, while longevity and education keep rising and economic indicators are better than in any past generation. Worldwide, malnutrition and extreme poverty are at historic lows, and the risk of dying by war and violence is the lowest in human history.
It's not a coincidence that we're confused—our perspectives on the world are blurred by the rise of social media, the machinations of politicians, and our own biases.
Easterbrook says that as life gets better, people feel worse. By 'life gets better' he does not mean all aspects of life are better, nor that life is better for every individual. By 'life gets better' he means that in the contemporary world most people are better off in most ways when compared to any prior generation.
This seems close to an inarguable proposition—yet runs against conventional wisdom because optimism has gone out of style.
Referenes
Hans Rosling with Anna Rosling Ronnlund and Ola Rosling, Factfulness, (New York, Flatiron Books, 2018)
Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear, (Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 2008)
Gregg Easterbrook, It's Better Than It Looks, (New York, PublicAffairs, 2018)
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
“When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world's population lives in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, investment bankers, and Nobel laureates,” says Hans Rosling . In his book, Factfulness, he claims our problem is that we know what we don't know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. 1
It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better shape than we might think. That doesn't mean there aren't real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threatens us most. 
