Hans Rosling doesn’t consider himself an optimist or pessimist but ‘possibilist’

http://www.nature.com/news/three-minutes-with-hans-rosling-will-change-your-mind-about-the-world-1.21143

by devnonymous • 10 years ago

164 43 10 years ago

nature.com

tim333• 10 years ago

Rosling's cheery stats are a good antidote to the usual horrors you see in the news.

anondon• 10 years ago

Pleasantly surprised to see the stats for a change.

devnonymous• 10 years ago

I agree. After reading through that article I looked up gapminder ( https://www.gapminder.org/ | https://www.gapminder.org/data/ ). Good time sink.

dahart• 10 years ago

News is a business that needs to grab attention to survive, it has always had a built-in bias toward horrors and drama because those get attention. News rarely talks about how most things you care about are slowly and steadily getting better on average over time.

kqr• 10 years ago

This is why I enjoyed reading The Economist. I might not have agreed with their editorial slant, but I loved how they didn't care much for human interest stories (or at least marginalised them) and did report on things slowly getting better all around the world.

(Stopped reading not because I was discontent, rather because of a lack of time.)

chiefalchemist• 10 years ago

Cause v correlation. Symptom v disease. We don't struggle with "facts" as much as we too often fail to apply enough critical thinking to get the real story identified and in context.

Humans are shallow. We know this.

ebbv4• 10 years ago

My problem with Rosling is that he furthers one of the problems with our modern discourse; the assumption that a given dataset inevitably leads to one conclusion. It's not true. I wish it were but it isn't.

The same statistics about mass incarceration of African American males in the US that leads me to conclude that we have an issue of systemic racism leads far right people to conclude that African American males have an inherent tendency toward criminality. I would call that a gross misrepresentation of the data, but it is what happens.

Rosling, in my mind, is guilty of misrepresenting some data, and I'm sure in his mind my conclusions based on the same data are equally ill informed.

But Rosling tends, for me, not to make convincing arguments. He tends to throw up some graphs and say "Look! It's obvious we should do what I say!!"

jessriedel3• 10 years ago

Rosling, in my mind, is guilty of misrepresenting some data

Examples?

ebbv4• 10 years ago

His famous TED talk against doing anything about climate change (a position which I think he later rescinded?) and instead focusing those funds on health and poverty reduction instead is littered with it, and based on a false assumption to begin with; that there is a pile of money that is already set aside and we're all in charge of directing it.

The reality is far more complicated. We aren't taking money away from fighting Malaria when we raise taxes on gas guzzling cars, to give just one example.

JamilD• 10 years ago

I find that people tend to look for a singular cause; a trail of evidence that leads to only one correct conclusion. It's an attitude exploited by crime dramas, TV shows, literature, etc.

Reality, of course, is far more complex, and I think Rosling is trying to play to those biases in human nature in order to influence people. Pointing to one inherent "truth" in the data is far more effective in convincing people than "it's complicated".

ebbv4• 10 years ago

Pointing to one inherent "truth" in the data is far more effective in convincing people than "it's complicated".

Yep and this is my biggest problem with populist "thinkers" like Gladwell and Rosling. They actually encourage the opposite of thinking; providing ready made simplistic conclusions for their audience.

Terretta• 10 years ago

Have you lived in central Africa? I have, for a decade. I saw first hand the catastrophic consequences of misguided "help".

You are responding about subtleties ("misrepresenting 'some' data") when the problem he's going after -- misguided feel-good intervention by the under informed, is more harmful than helpful -- is very real and bigger than any given issue.

You are down in the weeds debating this or that fact, instead, come up a level and help explain to others that understanding precedes helping -- which it sounds like you agree with, and is a more important point.

protomyth3• 10 years ago

No, folks on the right like to look at some other stats to broaden our understanding. A favorite statistic on the right is the number of African American adult males who grow up in low income situations without a father who then commit crimes as an adult. This same increase happens with every other race who is in a low income situation without a father in the house.

Try not to throw dirt on others when making a point as people filter the point through the shade you cast.

steveeq12• 10 years ago

I think culture also plays a role in explaining crime stats, not just poverty. Low income asian areas experience far fewer crime levels than corresponding low income black areas.

sshumaker2• 10 years ago

Because a substantial portion of these fathers are incarcerated due to issues with our criminal justice system?

If the right were indeed looking more broadly I would expect them to be advocates for justice system reform instead of "law and order."

naasking2• 10 years ago

leads far right people to conclude that African American males have an inherent tendency toward criminality.

I think you're being uncharitable. Conservatives wouldn't claim that African American males have inherent criminality. That would be unbelievably racist on its own. They instead say that African American males are simply more likely to commit crimes, which seems statistically true, if a tad misleading.

Of course, you are both probably wrong and the true underlying cause is actually economic disparity, which would encompass both interpretations. People who are more poor simply commit more crimes out of desperation, and African Americans are poorer due to historical reasons stemming from racism.

thesimpsons1022• 10 years ago

i believe he said "far right". this could be interpreted as anything from tea party to neo nazis and fascists depending on what "far" means. However i wouldn't take it to be directed to all "Conservatives".

awicz• 10 years ago

The criticisms of Rosling seem to surround around him painting with a broad brush and forming distilled conclusions. The trouble is that if Rosling were to dive into the details of these data and leave out conclusions the average person listening would get lost, have no actionable thesis, or both. I would include myself to be among these people.

The admirable thing about his presentations are that he encourages his listeners to trust data and question their preconceptions.

Certainly his methodolgy is not perfect. However, given how the public forms decisions right now (See US presidential election), I can't help but think this mentality is exactly what is needed.

Jill_the_Pill• 10 years ago

Amen. We have a lot of people digging through details in obscurity; we need a spokesman like this, of good will and broad understanding, instead of the usual shysters. There is a solid need for both roles; you don't criticize an epidemiologist for not being a surgeon.

criddell• 10 years ago

What a great article.

Two things jumped out at me. First, I love the resolution in the opening story about the machete-wielding mob. The power of a single old woman to defuse a dangerous situation is fascinating. As a person in an industry built on the backs of youth, I sometimes wonder how wasteful we are being by focusing on the future and forgetting about the past.

Second, it seems that Rosling's great superpower is communication. I love the Radio Lab podcast and am a firm believer that for a scientist, being able to tell stories about what you do is almost as important as the science.

dang• 10 years ago

Since the title and subtitle are baity, we switched to the photo caption.

agumonkey• 10 years ago

A combinatorialist

Fraterkes• 10 years ago

I don't have any specific critisism of Rosling (He seems very capable in a lot of ways). I think the part that many people find problematic is that he doesnt just present himself as a scientist but as someone who can interpret the data. And not just a normal interpreter but someone who has insights that almost nobody else has. You can argue wether this is true, but the fact is that this gives him an insane amount of credibility, and a kind of power that a non-expert should maybe use a little more sparingly.

philipkglass• 10 years ago

"Possibilism" is a good way to think about the world: weighing what paths are opened by changes in scientific knowledge or human societies and what paths are blocked, but refusing to stay anchored to a conclusion just because it was true at one particular time in the past. It's unfortunate that "realist" has connotations of cynicism, because Rosling is a good realist in that he is more willing to discard conclusions than data.

Hans Rosling doesn’t consider himself an optimist or pessimist but ‘possibilist’

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