Here’s a positive note on which to end 2015:

Having recently moved to Sweden, I have inevitably become more exposed to “Made in Sweden” products, be it consumer goods or ideas.

Today, I’d like to highlight some of the recent work of Hans Rosling, which can briefly be summarised as

The world is not as bad as the majority of us think. But is not really our fault for being wrong.  We are wrong about the world because we are biased, misinformed and our education is outdated

Aside from an accomplished Medical Doctor at the top Scandinavian medical institution, Karolinska Institutet, Hans Rosling is also the CEO of Gapminder, a fascinating non-profit organisation that organises (publicly available) statistics showing how the world has improved in so many different ways, be it from an education, health or income distribution perspective. This is the video that caught my eye and it uses the tools created by that organisation.

If you like this sort of thing, I recommend that you also check out the IMF DataMapper tool, which is also quite insightful, even if it lacks the very appealing time lapse feature.

In what follows, I go through some of things I thought about while watching this video. If you are interested in cognitive biases, prejudices, alienation income distribution and economic growth, you may want to have a look at this post. It says nothing new really and mainly praises the work and ethic of Gapminder. The point, some part of which I combed through in some detail to make sure there was no mistake, is that we are fortunate and should be happy to be alive at this moment in the history of our planet and that where exactly we were lucky to be born in exactly has never mattered as little as it does now. And that’s not nothing given recent developments across Europe and the middle east.

Continue reading Smile, the world is not as bad as you think! 🙂 →