48 | New Scientist | 7 September 2019
Can you give examples of these rules of thumb?
One is the fear instinct, which is the tendency
of humans to pay attention to frightening
things. In 2016, for example, 40 million
passenger flights landed safely at their
destinations and 10 ended in fatal accidents.
You probably heard about the 10 that
crashed not the 40 million that were fine.
Another chapter is on the blame instinct.
It comes naturally to put the blame on
one individual when things go wrong.
This tendency undermines our ability
to solve a problem because we are stuck
with finger-pointing, which distracts us from
the more complex truth.Spreading these ideas has become a family
mission. Did you ever expect it would result
in a worldwide bestselling book?
It’s kind of a mistake that we didn’t write the
book earlier. We got famous by visualising data
and with Hans’ first TED talk, where he showed
visualizations that I and Anna had developed
for six years. It was the first viral TED talk ever.
We thought of ourselves as digital
developers and made fun of books because
they are made of paper. You can get arrogant
when you’re successful in one field and ignore
the possibilities of other fields. This is bad. We
realised that communicating to wider
audiences is 100 times easier with a book.So you think the book makes it easier for people
to understand a fact-based worldview?
The method of the book is pretty strict.
Besides the rules of thumb, we presentthe results of a survey where we asked
13 questions about global development
to 12,000 people in 14 countries. Most
people were wrong.
We started the book with the same test
because we wanted to expose the readers to
their own ignorance. If we had only presented
the results of the survey, the readers would
have thought we were talking about someone
else. People need to be exposed to their own
ignorance to realise they need to learn.
We tend to think we already know
stuff, which means we have no reasons
to learn. To develop a fact-based worldview,
we need to realise that we are ignorant
about our ignorance.Finally, do you have a favourite statistic?
When my son was 1 year old, he got
meningitis and almost died in my arms.
My favourite trend is that child mortality
went down from 43 per cent to 4 per cent
between 1800 and 2016. As a parent, having
almost lost a child, I know what that number
means and it’s the meaning behind that
number that really counts.
That’s why I do this work. Our world
really is improving and we know how to
help those last 4 per cent of children. They
are dying for no good reason. We already
have the cure. We know exactly what they
need. They need clean water, they need a
mum who went to school and they need
primary health care and vaccines. ❚Jacob Aron is deputy news editor at New ScientistFactfulness
Ola Rosling will speak at New Scientist Live about
why things are better than you think
newscientistlive.comOla Rosling is a Swedish statistician
and co-founder and president of the
Gapminder Foundation. He developed
Trendalyzer, a bubble chart tool that
was acquired by Google, and led the
firm’s public data team.It com
iivisualiz1800 1900 2000201618001980 2000201619791940 1960 1980 20002012-161929-3319701800 1900 2000 2010201519701900 1950 200019002016
2014201620161970 1980 1990 2000 201019611800 1900 200018001980
1980 1990 2000 20104%44%66361210011%28%0.03%14.7%
486%88%1.410% 22%Percentage dying before their fifth birthday 1000 tonnes of oil spilled from tanker shipsDeaths per 10 billion passenger miles
(5-year averages)Share of people undernourishedShare of Earth’s land surface protected as
national parks and other reservesCereal yield (1000 kg per hectare)Proportion of people older than 15
with basic reading and writing skillsPercentage of 1-year-olds who have
had at least one vaccinationSOURCE: FactfulnessCHILDREN DYINGFour bad things getting better Four good things increasingOIL SPILLSPLANE CRASH DEATHS HUNGERPROTECTED NATURE HARVESTLITERACY IMMUNISATION85
Percentage of people
with access to
electricity in 2014