Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Fear vs. Danger: Being Afraid of the Right
Things
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 risky.
This chapter has touched on 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). None of them 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

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loved ones from danger, we should suppress our fear instinct and measure the
actual death tolls.
Because “frightening” and “dangerous” are two different things. Something
frightening poses a perceived risk. Something dangerous poses a real risk.
Paying too much attention to what is frightening rather than what is
dangerous—that is, paying too much attention to fear—creates a tragic
drainage of energy in the wrong directions. It makes a terrified junior doctor
think about nuclear war when he should be treating hypothermia, and it makes
whole populations focus on earthquakes and crashing planes and invisible
substances when millions are dying from diarrhea and seafloors are becoming
underwater deserts. I would like my fear to be focused on the mega dangers of
today, and not the dangers from our evolutionary past.
Factfulness
Factfulness is … recognizing when frightening things get our attention,
and remembering that these are not necessarily the most risky. Our natural
fears of violence, captivity, and contamination make us systematically
overestimate these risks.
To control the fear instinct,