Factfullness : A review

One of the most mind boggling and life changing books I have read in a long while. Recommended by Bill Gates himself, if you like having a larger than life world view, it is definitely for you.

I am not writing this review to talk much about what the book talks about. If you too (like me) think you are smart, read the book. You are not, if you think you know much about the world, even if you are from developing countries or low income countries and are very hard working, let me tell you this : You know nothing my friend (yes, you are Jon Snow). Your facts are outdated, and even when you would have probably seen the true facts you could not have assimilated them. Acceptance, sure, but assimilation requires patience, but more importantly it requires going against all the natural human instincts. The book focuses on the fact, and tries to prove they are better than you think they are. It also focuses on why we do not understand the things the way they are, and put a curved wild goose perspective on the facts and interpret them the way we want them to. The book is really amazing at going deep into the data and figuring out the exact ways in which we can avoid doing the things we have been doing this point of time.

BUT, as usual, I think I have some more insights that might not have been discussed in the book. It is some how related to the fact, that the population outburst starting somewhere in the 17th century to the point where we have reached now, actually is a much deeper than what it seems. It would seem that from the fact that population levels are now slowing down, and we will again reach a stable state, where the number of people being born is nearly balanced out by the number of people dying. That, along with low amount of violence, more equality, it would seem that we are reaching a stable state. Another local optima (or global) seems to be coming, so that would explain the last 300 years as going up and down the trough. Things became worse before they go better. We went out of balance with nature, for a pretty long while, but it would seem, if things go right we can come back to a new balance. But the entire point, where all is the difficulty? Why are we not there yet?

It would seem, that the previous balance, the minima, the balance, whatever you prefer, was not created us, but by larger forces of nature. We were not the ones doing the heavy lifting, the thinking, the making. More deeper natural processes were taking us towards the minima over large periods of time, by small amounts of progress with every generation. Therefore, in built in us, were a lot of concepts which came along with that local minima. The book, refers to a large number of such concepts, such as fear or a binary classification of “us” and “them”. The same binary classification has been a key part of evolution of what is termed as “culture”. This is not the first book to highlight this, as a matter of fact. There is a huge discussion on this in the book Sapiens, which goes on to say that the classification between “us” and “them”, is what has partially contributed to the human race building dynamic cultures which values societies over individuals. The binding force of classification towards the people you are more comfortable to enables us to go out of our way and give our lives to activities which are not optimal lifestyles for us individually, but we do it anyway, in the name of better meant of society. But the fact is that such a quality is not innate to the human. It is acquired after we are born by intense conditioning by our parents, guardians or the education system. And if we still do not learn, we are negatively reinforced till we acquire it by law enforcement and the judicial systems.

But over all, I would say this book would enable you to realize the potential to achieve and change the world by focusing on what matters. It would help you see the differences between what seems real, and focus on numbers. It reiterates living through numbers is the only simplistic way to live. In order to realize why we should be doing something we need to first understand it, and the only way is numbers. Because numbers do not care about emotions.