Current affairs quiz in which chimps do better than humans
This might come as a surprise but it’s very likely the world is doing better than you think. How do I know? That’s what the data shows.
Over several decades Swedish public health statistician Hans Rosling put basic questions about the state of the world to thousands of people from different walks of life in a host of countries. His questions covered issues such as poverty and wealth, population growth, longevity, education, health and the environment.
Rosling, who is well known for his groundbreaking data visualisations, was careful to only use facts that were well documented and undisputed. But he found most people flunked his tests.
One of the questions he liked to ask was whether the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty over the past 20 years has; (a) almost doubled, (b) remained the same or (c) almost halved. On average only 7 per cent answered correctly that poverty has almost halved.
Last year Rosling and his associates used some of his questions in a short online poll of 12,000 people in 14 countries, including Australia. Respondents scored an average of two correct answers out of the first 12 questions.
Australia didn’t perform particularly well compared with other countries – it was ranked in the middle of the pack.
That suggests most Australians have a world view about 30 years out of date.
Rosling’s tests show even very informed audiences are uninformed about some striking global trends such as a slow-down in population growth, a rapid increase in life expectancy (now 71 years globally) and improved access to primary health care in poorer nations.
In 2015, Rosling asked three of his questions (on poverty, population growth and vaccination rates) at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, attended by some of the world’s most influential political and business leaders.
A majority of that elite audience (61 per cent) correctly answered a question on poverty reduction but had a relatively low share of correct answers for the other two.
Some of the worst results came from a group of Nobel laureates and medical researchers.
“Everyone seems to get the world devastatingly wrong,” writes Rosling including a “stunning majority” of well-educated people.
He points out that people typically perform worse than chimpanzees. Through pure luck the chimps get an average of four correct answers out of 12 questions whereas humans got an average of two.
There was another revealing difference between the chimps and humans. “The human errors all tend to be in one direction,” writes Rosling. “Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent and more hopeless ... than it really is.”
This tendency to think things are worse than they really are can be seen in Australian opinion polls. An annual survey by Ipsos which tests public misperceptions consistently shows respondents overrate negatives and underrate positives.
For instance, we overestimate the number of people who are unemployed and wrongly assume the homicide rate is unchanged or rising even though it has been in decline for some years.
The reality is not as bad as what survey respondents assumed on deaths due to terrorism, the number of teenage births and the prevalence of diabetes.
Rosling reckons this negative bias comes naturally. “My experience, over decades of lecturing and testing, has finally brought me to see that the overdramatic world view comes from the very way our brains work.”
Before his death last year, Rosling wrote a book called with his son and daughter-in-law. It aims to help people see what is getting better and to spread that improvement.
It is a a refreshing counterpoint to the recent fixation on “fake news”.
“Factfulness, like a healthy diet and regular exercise, can and should become part of your daily life,” the book says.
The book identifies unhelpful instincts that can mislead. One of these is a “negativity instinct” – how we find sudden bad news more interesting and memorable than slow-burn good news.
Another is dubbed the “destiny instinct” – the idea that “innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions or cultures” and that things will never change.
Having a more “factful” world view is not to say all is well. It is “absolutely true”, writes Rosling, that there are many very bad things in this world.
Wars in Syria and Iraq, for instance, have helped reverse a long-term decline in the number of conflict fatalities since the end of World War II.
“We cannot relax,” writes Rosling. “But it is just as ridiculous to look away from the progress that has been made.”
The world can be both "bad and better”. Having a clearer view of how things really are can be a source of “mental peace” he writes. “Because the world is not as dramatic as it seems.”