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

The Mega Misconception That “The World Is
Getting Worse”
This chapter is about the negativity instinct: our tendency to notice the bad
more than the good. This instinct is behind the second mega misconception.
“Things are getting worse” is the statement about the world that I hear
more than any other. And it is absolutely true that there are many bad things
in this world.
The number of war fatalities has been falling since the Second World War,
but with the Syrian war, the trend has reversed. Terrorism too is rising again.
(We’ll get back to that in chapter 4.)
Overfishing and the deterioration of the seas are truly worrisome. The lists
of dead areas in the world’s oceans and of endangered species are getting
longer.
Ice is melting. Sea levels will continue to rise by probably three feet over
the next 100 years. There’s no doubt it’s because of all the greenhouse gases
humans have pumped into the atmosphere, which won’t disperse for a long
time, even if we stop adding more.
The collapse of the US housing market in 2007, which no regulators had
predicted, was caused by widespread illusions of safety in abstract
investments, which hardly anyone understood. The system remains as
complex now as it was then and a similar crisis could happen again. Maybe
tomorrow.
In order for this planet to have financial stability, peace, and protected
natural resources, there’s one thing we can’t do without, and that’s
international collaboration, based on a shared and fact-based understanding of

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the world. The current lack of knowledge about the world is therefore the
most concerning problem of all.
I hear so many negative things all the time. Maybe you think, “Hans, you
must just meet all the gloomiest people.” We decided to check.
People in 30 countries were asked the question at the top of the chapter: 
Do
you think the world is getting better, getting worse, or staying about the
same?
This is what they said.
I never trust data 100 percent, and you never should either. There is always

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some uncertainty. In this case, I’d say these numbers are roughly right, but
you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions based on small differences. (By the
way, that is a good general principle with statistics: be careful jumping to any
conclusions if the differences are smaller than say, roughly, 10 percent.) The
big picture is still crystal clear though. The majority of people think the world
is getting worse. No wonder we all feel so stressed.