The late Swedish WHO public health physician toured the world giving lectures and quizzes to executives, intellectual leaders, professional associations, educators, Nobel laureates and politicians, including the elite at the Davos World Economic Forum. He uses the responses to his multiple choice quizzes to analyze why these highly educated individuals systemically provide the wrong answers, usually doing worse than chimpanzees that pick answers at random. The correct answers are usually not disputable, being derived from large UN and WHO databases.
Of the 12 fact questions about common important problems that he starts off with, no country’s highly educated respondents on average did better than chance in their answers to any, and most did worse than chimpanzees pushing one of three buttons at random. I was quite proud of my correct response to 8, at least better than the chimps.
In the bulk of the book, a systematic analysis of ten common instincts that lead most of us away from factual realities are exposed and suggestions are made to counteract them. Although the media with their bias toward the sensational but unusual comes in for early blame, he acknowledges that journalists are just providing what sells. “I cannot see even the highest-quality news outlets conveying a neutral and non dramatic representative picture of the world… it would be correct but just too boring.” But I have a suggestion. It may be beyond government power, but news organizations could require or at least request that their outlets balance their bad news stories such as natural disasters, wars and the spread of pandemics with an equal number of good news stories, many of which could come from the upbeat data in this book. e.g. “Today, the world set a new record low for the number of people living in extreme poverty.” Or “1.6 million people flew on 145,000 commercial flights today and they all landed safely.” A great New Year’s resolution for any reporter.
The overall message, like that of Rutgers Bregman in Humankind and Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature is that the world is getting better, and of the three, this provides the best proof and is by far the easiest read. The writing is well organized, delivered with acknowledgment of the authors failings, and humorous self-deprecating anecdotes. It is little wonder that both Barack Obama and Melinda Gates have lavished praise on this work.
Brilliant, timeless, loaded with counterintuitive flawless insights and sage advice, reading this book will forever drastically change your wold view regardless of your background.
Thanks, Andra.
The Passionate Reader 