Blog entry 9 - On being Factful

Blog entry 9 - On being Factful

I just finished a very interesting book.  Factfulness - Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, by Hans Rosling.  I found it very interesting, and of deep concern.

I highly recommend this book, by the way.  I also highly recommend reading, in general.  It promotes thoughtfulness; watching stuff on TV and online tends to promote more knee-jerk responsiveness than thoughtfulness.  Unless you're watching Cosmos or Planet Earth or something...

Among the other things it talks about repeatedly are 13 questions, multiple choice, about the global situation.  Spoiler alert: On a global basis, we tend to think things are much worse than they actually are.  I took the quiz, and got 4 right out of the first 12 (the 13th would be a gimme to most informed people).  Hans points out that _chimps_, randomly, would get 4 out of 12 right with 3 choices per question.  And that the average overall, globally, is 2 correct answers.  For just about every type of person.  The less "informed", probably the better they do.

One point that he makes in his book is that we're prone to hear negative stories and generalize them excessively.  Girls aren't allowed in schools in Afghanistan?  We conclude that's what "the undeveloped countries" are like.  It's hard to get inoculations for kids to parts of the world?  Is that common?  It turns out it truly isn't.

I'm a world traveler.  Not like my friend Ed - I've never been places where I carry rocks to throw at feral dogs - but I've been to China, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Turkey, Croatia, Italy, France, Belgium, Norway, the UK, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Luxembourg, Germany... I've seen people scavenging for food in garbage piles, and been in a bus in a foreign country stopped by guys holding assault weapons, and seen people whose houses were essentially built with piles of rocks.  I didn't ever volunteer for a Peace Corps assignment or anything, but I think of myself as interested, and at least somewhat informed.

And my view of the world is probably, essentially, 30 years out of date.  What I was taught in high school, what I thought of as base information, is truly not valid.

The world has changed dramatically in the past 20 years, according to Hans.  And he had numbers to back it all up.

(Hans died last year, hence the past tense...)

Why does this matter?

I doubt that we, as Americans, are truly much more informed about our own country, in terms of factuality.  For much of the same reasons.

We're driven by fear of things that aren't very probable.  Republicans were apparently driven by fear that Obama would take away his guns.  Democrats are driven by fear that Kavanaugh will take away abortion choice.

We are deeply influenced by recent events, and miss the long-term trends.  Democrats and BLM get upset about police violence against black victims - is it much worse than it was before, or has it always been bad and now we just are more aware of it?  Republicans are upset about immigrants committing crimes - are immigrants committing more crimes than other people, or are there always people committing crimes in every population?  Aren't things actually getting better, on both sides?  Crime overall is down; misbehavior by police is being publicized, and people are being sued and losing, when they misbehave.  Maybe not enough.  Maybe things aren't improving quickly enough.  But the long-term trend has been positive, in general.

We're called to urgently take action because of some artificial deadline.  Republicans _had_ to confirm Kavanaugh before all the facts were understood.  Democrats _have_ to retake the House in 2018 or America will cease to exist as a democracy.  In fact, those short-term priorities can distract us from making reasonable decisions.  Hans relates a story where a road is closed to try to protect a city from a potential outbreak, which leads people to take boats, which capsize, and 18 people die... because they needed to do SOMETHING, RIGHT AWAY.  Cases that come to mind for me are Kavanaugh, and Iraq, and Al Franken resigning... and almost all the Republican actions for the past 2 years.  If they didn't feel like the clock was ticking, wouldn't they have actually welcomed discussion and debate instead of unilaterally reducing national monuments, rolling back environmental protections which will end up sickening and killing people, confirming a justice who will be in grave danger for the rest of his life of being impeached, supporting a President who does not truly share the values of the rest of the leaders of his party, ... Note that Democrats were just as eager to invade Iraq as Republicans were, it was framed as "We have to take action!", when we DIDN'T have to take action, Saddam was completely contained, and he wasn't involved in the terrorism anyway.  I think Republicans have _institutionalized_ lack of foresight/lack of discussion/promoting a sense of urgency to support actions they want to take, but there are certainly cases of it by Democrats too.

I wanted to take a step back and examine my beliefs and my values.  And I want to do so on an ongoing basis, rather than taking core beliefs for granted.

I started this blog because of my unhappiness... ok, anger... that we, as a country, were willing to have a Supreme Court justice confirmed who committed perjury.  I remain dedicated to that.  But, stepping back, I understand that we've probably had Supreme Court justices who were bad men before.  Perjurers.  Attempted rapists.  Probably worse.  We do have information on which to base Kavanaugh's perjury, at a minimum.  But either our Supreme Court is strong enough to deal with 1 bad man... or there are more bad men there that we failed to keep off it before.  Either we have a certain trust in our institutions, regardless of how much Republicans are intentionally damaging/deconstructing them, or they weren't very strong to begin with and we need to improve them.  Sure, Republicans are intentionally chipping away at a dam that was supposed to protect us all, but we are LETTING THEM DO IT!  And we really ought to help them understand that, when the dam breaks, they too will drown.

Hans talks in the book about how climate change is a real and ominous threat... and yet he refused to help Al Gore "sell" it as more dire than it actually is.  I don't know if climate skeptics ought to read this book because of that anecdote, or whether they need to avoid it because factfulness would destroy their opposition to doing something about it.  Maybe their heads would explode.

Hans said we should teach people that cultural and religious stereotypes are useless for understanding the world.  That goes for everyone who talks about the "other" side negatively, or talks positively about their own side in comparison.  Republicans with knee-jerk talk about "the left" as if they're the enemy... and Democrats with knee-jerk opposition to all Republican stances.  I know, this is VERY hard to do properly since there are so many awful Republican stances, but they should each be examined and opposed based on the individual case rather than simply because of the party that is proposing them.  Some kind of retirement reform will be necessary as the working population shrinks and the retired population grows.  Some kind of medical benefits control will be needed as medical costs continue to rise and people live longer with more ongoing medical issues.  Personally, I think we will need to recognize that it's better for older people to choose to die than to spend huge amounts of our money keeping people alive who really want to die.  Personally, I think it's absurd to take religious steps to prevent people from ending unwanted pregnancies.  I could go on and on, but it's getting late, time for bed.  Time for more thoughts later, I trust...