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

The Blame Instinct
The blame instinct is the instinct to find a clear, simple reason for why
something bad has happened. I had this instinct just recently when I was
taking a shower in a hotel and turned the warm handle up to maximum.
Nothing happened. Then, seconds later, I was being burned by scorching
water. In those moments, I was furious with the plumber, and then the hotel
manager, and then the person who might be running cold water next door. But
no one was to blame. No one had intentionally caused me harm or been
neglectful, except perhaps me, when I didn’t have the patience to turn the
warm handle more gradually.
It seems that it comes very naturally for us to decide that when things go
wrong, it must be because of some bad individual with bad intentions. We like
to believe that things happen because someone wanted them to, that
individuals have power and agency: otherwise, the world feels unpredictable,
confusing, and frightening.
The blame instinct makes us exaggerate the importance of individuals or of
particular groups. This instinct to find a guilty party derails our ability to
develop a true, fact-based understanding of the world: it steals our focus as
we obsess about someone to blame, then blocks our learning because once we
have decided who to punch in the face we stop looking for explanations
elsewhere. This undermines our ability to solve the problem, or prevent it
from happening again, because we are stuck with oversimplistic finger
pointing, which distracts us from the more complex truth and prevents us
from focusing our energy in the right places.
For example, blaming an airplane crash on a sleepy pilot will not help to
stop future crashes. To do that, we must ask: Why was he sleepy? How can
we regulate against sleepy pilots in the future? If we stop thinking when we
find the sleepy pilot, we make no progress. To understand most of the world’s
significant problems we have to look beyond a guilty individual and to the
system.
The same instinct is triggered when things go well. “Claim” comes just as
easily as “blame.” When something goes well, we are very quick to give the
credit to an individual or a simple cause, when again it is usually more
complicated.
If you really want to change the world you have to understand it. Following
your blame instinct isn’t going to help.

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