Book Review – Factfulness by Hans Rosling

Rosling is/was the cleverest of manipulators, since he knew and understood quantitative techniques. He understood what was PC and how to present things and thus got well and properly funded. Not a person to mourn.

A few examples to support my case:
(1) The “best of all worlds” fallacy: Demonstrating how wasteful market economy is, and how in another world with a better controlled economy, a (very) large number of people can be supported. The fallacy, of course, is that by ALL experience, in practice ANY heavily managed economy is vastly less efficient than a reasonably free market economy. Promoting wishful thinking in that way is simply irresponsible.
(2) The “no mixing pot” fallacy: In a video Rosling demonstrates with green and yellow bags that even if Westerners, a green bag, reproduces without multiplying, - while others, yellow bags, increase in numbers, the green bag would persist and keep a place in the world. The fallacy, of course, is that outsiders migrate and appropriate Western societies to make them unrecognizable and effectively un-livable for traditional Westerners.
(3) The “praise past, forget future” fallacy: While praising how much population growth has decreased in irresponsible growth regions and conveniently extending this trend, Rosling “forgets” to consider whether expected future growth can be accommodated at all. The fallacy is seen by comparison to a car. When approaching a hard wall any braking is useful, even if the collision can still be fatal. When approaching a large drop, it hardly matters if you enter the vertical fall at a horizontal speed of 50 or 20 mph. I propose societal disintegration from overpopulation is more like the drop case.

morlindk, SQL MCSE, applied statistician