Spur of the Moment Guide to FACTFULNESS: WEEK 17

p. 101-105

In the intro of the fourth chapter, the author shares an interesting and funny personal story. The story is also a good way to introduce us to the idea of the fear instinct. As a personal side note, it also happened to be particularly "funny" since I had happened to watch the first episode of "Occupied" before reading it. Hint: the author's story in the book takes place in 1975.

Further on, there’s a short explanation about our brains and information. Briefly, there’s too much information out there and our brain cannot process it all. So we select a few pieces of information to focus on and we ignore others.

How do we do that? First, we seem to be attracted to stories which means to “information that sound dramatic.” (page 104, first paragraph)

Second, we have the attention filter. That filter lets information come through several holes. These holes are the 10 instincts the author analyzes in the book.

So far he’s covered the:

1. gap instinct
2. negativity instinct
3. straight line instinct
4. fear instinct.

So basically we have to be careful not to let the stories we hear about to formulate our worldview. Why? Because the media choose to go with dramatic stories. Why? Because we are predisposed to sit and listen to those.

That is good information to have and a pretty useful thinking to acquire.

But something seems to bother me a little bit and am not quite sure what. Yes, we all, to some degree or another, have realized at some point how these instincts have taken over and influenced our opinion, actions or worldview. But it’s not that simple, is it?

I mean, beyond all the other “buts” I included in the previous posts, is everyone really thinking based just on these instincts? Yes, there are all these negative events we constantly hear about, but surely we are also familiar with how the world has gotten better over the years, for example. No?

The author has data to prove that no, most just focus on the negative and thus their worldview is skewered towards that.

I think what bothers me has to do with the point of view I have that mostly the reason people seem to have a negative view of the world is not because they aren’t particularly familiar with the facts or overconsumed by negativity or fear, but because their relative position in the world stands at a higher level compared to the past. Based on that elevated position, their standards being more demanding, they are judging the current situation of the world and they find it unacceptable. More should have been accomplished. Everything should be better compared to what we have and what we could have.

So it’s more like ‘the world is not doing as well is it could or as it should’ instead of ‘the world is not doing well’.

That’s just an impression, of course.

The Spur of the Moment Guide to FACTFULNESS is a series of posts of first thoughts while reading the book FACTFULNESS by Hans Rosling (this is an affiliate link).

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