This is because illusions don’t happen in our eyes, they happen in our brains. They are systematic misinterpretations, unrelated to individual sight problems. Knowing that most people are deluded means you don’t need to be embarrassed. Instead you can be curious: how does the illusion work?

I think it was in high school when I first heard someone say, “Statistics don’t lie, but you can lie with statistics.” Absolutely, facts and figures and data are true to what they are and how they are collected. And then someone can take that data and shape it, presenting it in such a way to fulfill their pre-conceived narrative. As critical, conscientious consumers of mass media, then, how can separate truth from untruth? What can we do if the “facts” are “lying” to us?

The Factfulness of Life Expectancy

Not to be confused with Stephen Colbert‘s truthiness, Factfulness helps provide a framework from which we can better interpret and understand the information we read, hear and see. Written by Swedish statistician Hans Rosling, with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness challenges many of the ways that we may have misunderstood “common knowledge” and other “facts” we’ve been told.

For example, you’ve likely heard that average life expectancy during the Middle Ages was somewhere around 33 years. From this, most of us (myself included) assumed that most people died in their 30s, right? Except that’s not at all the case. Infant and child mortality rates were much higher during the Middle Ages. About half of kids born died in their childhood. That skews the average significantly.

If a person born in the Middle Ages managed to survive into their teenage years, there’s a good chance they were going to make it to their 50s (and possibly beyond). The “average” statistic is accurate and correct, but it hardly represents the actual truth of the situation.

The reverse is true too:

Factfulness is … recognizing when a story talks about a gap, and remembering that this paints a picture of two separate groups, with a gap in between. The reality is often not polarized at all. Usually the majority is right there in the middle, where the gap is supposed to be. To control the gap instinct, look for the majority.

The Truth Is Out There

Today, we literally have all of human knowledge at our fingertips via the supercomputers we carry in our pockets. We also have all of human misinformation at our fingertips through the same devices. In an era of “fake news,” we must overcome two huge obstacles.

First, we may be misinterpreting the data. Or we’re only see part of the picture, focusing too much on the outliers and not on the bigger picture. Second, spreading mistruths online is just as easy (if not easier) than disseminating factual information. And it can often be difficult to distinguish between the two.

Our brains often jump to swift conclusions without much thinking, which used to help us to avoid immediate dangers. We are interested in gossip and dramatic stories, which used to be the only source of news and useful information. We crave sugar and fat, which used to be life-saving sources of energy when food was scarce. We have many instincts that used to be useful thousands of years ago, but we live in a very different world now.

Bad, But Better

Yes, it’s neither comprehensive nor conclusive, but Factfulness does offer a lens (or several lenses) through which we can be more critical about the information we consume. The book also reminds us to keep a positive outlook for the future, tempered by recognizing the difficulties of the present.

We should be teaching them how to hold the two ideas at the same time: that bad things are going on in the world, but that many things are getting better.

And it’s up to us, based on the information we have and what we choose to do with it, to ensure things keep getting better.

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