Spur of the Moment Guide to FACTFULNESS: WEEK 23
p. 128 –132
In these pages, Hans Rosling talks about the size instinct. First, here’s some practical advice: “So if you are investing money to improve health on Level 1 or 2, you should put it into primary schools, nurse education, and vaccinations” (page 129).
In order to avoid being misled by the size instinct, the author suggests trying to always compare numbers. Don’t just use one, especially a large number, to form an opinion. As an example, he mentions the number of dead babies. It’s in the millions. It’s awful to think about it. But apparently, that number is a lot smaller than it used to be. It’s not OK for millions of babies to be dying, but by comparing the numbers we might be able to more accurately determine what works in reducing that number.
One can’t help but to stop and think what kind of results would get by doing something like that with migrant integration numbers per country and time periods. What worked in the past and would it work today? Having a quick look on Google I stumbled upon this research paper, titled “Immigration, integration and ghetto formation”.
The paper’s author uses a physics model and the results of the simulation say that the rate of immigration and the intensity of the integration measures can affect the formation or the dissolution of a ghetto. Logically, that makes sense. Certainly one can come up with multiple other variables that would affect the formation or dissolution of a ghetto. Nevertheless, even if we take into account the fear instinct and the size instinct, the immigration rate in certain countries has increased the past few years and integration methods—since ghettos continue to form—don’t seem to be set at the right intensity.
On pages 131 – 132, Hans Rosling offers a different type of example about the size instinct based on his personal experience in Vietnam. It’s about the size of war monuments and their respective size compared to the years each war lasted. There are multiple thoughts that come up reading that story. Here’s a brief one: history—personal and otherwise—puts things into perspective.
The Spur of the Moment Guide to FACTFULNESS is a series of posts of first thoughts while reading the book FACTFULNESS by Hans Rosling (this is an affiliate link).
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