Public Libraries of Suffolk County, New York

Factfulness, ten reasons we're wrong about the world--and why things are better than you think, Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

eng

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other

Factfulness

sound recording audiobook CD

Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

ten reasons we're wrong about the world--and why things are better than you think

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends-what percentage of the world's population live 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, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective-from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don't know what we don't know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state 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 threaten us most

adult

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