Mr. Rosling and Mr. Rosling, thanks once again for a compelling insight into the world's status and trends.

Unfortunately this time I passionately disagree with your chart of the camel and the dromedar – mainly because of three reasons:

1. Your chart skews the real situation by using a logarithmic scale. Once you re-scale it to absolute figures one can see that not much has changed. The income distribution looks like a rat and has looked that way for the past decades. The greatest part of humans have low or very low income (the rat's head) and a small percentage have high income up to very, very high income (the rat's tail).

2. Income doesn't say a lot, when you ignore wealth; if you look at the wealth distribution (see link at the bottom) the growing inequality is easily seen.

3. The air plane ticket is a bad example since air plane tickets have gotten way cheaper over the past decades. Using this as an example of growing wealth only increases the effects of inflation that you apparently haven't taken into account either.

Please have a look at wealth distribution. There you can see that – by far – things are not getting better, they escalate, see this fine video of the situation in the US alone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhZ7cUFGDGc

Here's what I feel is missing from the presentation: It implies that the bulk of wealth is distributed evenly, when truth is, there is consistent disparity. While a larger number of people in the world are able to afford the basics of life, the wealthiest among us have an absurd amount of income.

In many so-called "first world" nations, the wealthy billionaires amass wealth, leaving the rest to suffer economically, and while we have food to eat each day, the hopelessness is apparent, when we are not afforded the same opportunities for advancement, and when any financial emergency that arises has the ability to derail our livelihoods. In other words, the data shows that those in the most destitute of situations are improving and that is wonderful, yet the wealthy are continually hording more and more wealth, leaving so many of us more and more in positions of servitude and dependence upon them for our survival.

Getting Better? Discuss some environmental parameters such as increasing threats to threatened and endangered species, loss of habitat, urbanization, deforestation, monoculture agriculture, increasing use of genetic modifications and chemicals, degradation of wetlands, the list goes on.

I understood the purpose of the Roslings' presentation to be less about communicating the specifics of the graphs than to illustrate how people's beliefs of what is true are biased, with a particular cause being media that exaggerate the negative and sensational and another being a tendency to cling to out-of-date scenarios.

I know some listeners will be offended by the style of presentation, but if we can get past that to ask what we might take away as a useful question to ask ourselves, we would be wise to ask in particular cases whether our intuitions or the facts we hold to be true are, in fact, up to date and based on reliable current evidence. There is nothing to lose from asking ourselves this question and much to gain.

Mr. Rosling - I disagree. Your premise is ignorance, but the ignorance that you test for is simply the viewpoint and statistical support you hold. The Poverty that you claim has been cut in half is based on $1 per day. The statistics of today ALSO are:

In all, 2.4 billion people lived on less than US $2 a day in 2010, the average poverty line in developing countries and another common measurement of deep deprivation. That is only a slight decline from 2.59 billion in 1981.

Statistics are so malleable. Knowledge or ignorance of your particular set does not define "Ignorance of the World." Just of your world.

RIP Hans Rosling, you've been an inspiration!

Can we please have this certificate as a bar of entry also for our parliaments and governments?

Sorry…it's not very clear…is the 2nd world war considered a natural disaster? Women in school … when… where … this question is so vague it's non-sensical.

The questions asked were decidedly lacking decisive probing but rather seem to be leaning toward the results the research funding was hoping to expose.

What is the bias of measurement?

Chimps? If you ask an amoeba a question based on what you believe it's communicating…then I'm certain it will verify expensive research.

This is the most ridiculous talk I've heard on Ted.

[btw…shoulder pads were popular among women in the 1980s]

I absolutely love Hans Rosling's presentation and his delivery style.

However, I was flabbergasted by the claims he made on poverty.

GDP per capita studies show great improvement of financial status worldwide, notably because of the "1%" which now has an astronomical slice of the pie.

Wealth/income distribution studies show a much different picture which shows a clearer trend in the majority's loss of income/wealth over the past 40-50 years.

Then Ola Rosling drops the "bomb" (at 18 mins 35), which I suspected all along. They use GDP per capita to talk about their "improvements" in financial status.

They use World Bank figures. Checking what the WB says about its own figures: (i) they grossly underestimated the improvement of people in poor countries; (ii) they estimate that 2.4 billion people in the world live on LESS than 2 USD per day (this is 33% of the 7.2 billion people we are today) (Ref: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview).

I don't know what Rosling & Rosling consider "extreme poverty" or anybody else, but 2 USD per day (730 USD per year) is not "dirt poor"? By any standards in any country?

I was hoping somehow that researchers of this caliber would research the topic more thoroughly and let the "data set change their mind set".

Using GDP per capita is WRONG in terms of financial well-being!

Example: In Year 1, 5 people earn 10 widgets each, 7 widgets are needed in order for individuals to live "comfortably". Everyone earns 30% more than is needed (savings, further comforts, saving for pensions, etc).

In Year 2, one person earns 20 widgets, one 15 widgets, two earn 7 and one 6. Widgets per capita says that the people in the country have improved by 10%. Looking at the distribution, 2 are living a luxury life, 2 just scrape through (with no buffer in case anything goes wrong) and one struggles.

Unfortunately, the lop-sided income distribution in the current world is MUCH more lop-sided than the example I gave above.

This is the most ridiculous talk I have heard on Ted. Purchasing power of 1 dolar changes in 40 years. We can't just say that we earn more money than 1975 so we were getting richer. Also these statistics are biased. They count world war 2 as natural disasters which obviously they shouldn't. Statistics can be deceptive. They say that the gap between poor and rich are close. However, it isn't. When they calculate gpa, they add bill gates money to lets say 1 million poor people money and then divide it to 1 million and 1. Is this show us that those 1 million people getting richer ?We should ask ourselves to that question, How many people around us is happy with their income and do they maintaince their living standarts with this income. These statistics and graphics is far a head to reflect the truth. If we really want to undertand powerty, we should go to street and observe ordinary people lives and try to understand their perspectives. This talk neither satisfy my expectations nor the reality of the world. I really want to talk Ola and Hans Rosling about this presentation cause there are lots of things that they should think of when they do such researcs but unfortunately I they didn't.

I have very serious doubts about the accuracy of the data used in this presentation. If you look at the graph for deaths by natural disasters per year @2:20

The data for the last 30-40 years is clearly well below the 100,000 people per year line in every year.

Which is strange considering

1970, Bhola Cyclone killed 500,000-1,000,000 
1975, Typhoon nina killed 230,000 
1976, Tangshan earthquake killed 250,000-650,000 
2004, Sumatra earthquake and tsunami killed 280,000 
2005, the Karachi earthquake killed 100,000 
2008, Cyclone Nargis killed 140,000 and the Sichuan earthquake killed 80,000 
2010, Haiti earthquake killed 220,000

How can there be so many people dead in these single events yet your data for the entire year, worldwide is showing only 10%-20% of those fatalities?

Could Hans or Ola explain this please?

Time to apply that "emotional reaction probably exaggerated something" concept. While I loved the presentation, there's a representational issue leaving me unconvinced of the wealth equality point. Specifically, the graphic used presents the distance between 1 and 10 to be the exact same as the distance between 10 and 100. I maybe wrong, but this seems mathematically false. The graphic should show what's called a "right-skewed distribution" in statistics. That is, the hump should have a long tale trailing off to the right to the largest data point. The reason for that is to show a distribution including each actual data point. Presenting the data like this makes it seem like things are more equal than they actually are, because it makes the data look like a normal (symmetrical) distribution, meaning the number of people to the left of average (below average) is equal to the number of people to the right of average (above average). What was shown is blatant false representation, especially when the data is refocused to show the actual concentration of wealth. I forget the documentary that expounds on this, it's either Maxed Out of Spurlock's series called 30 Days, but that a narrow range of people better imitates a normal distribution than before does not imply the level of wealth equality we currently have is really much of an improvement.

Such an interesting speach! It's curious how deeply confused we are about the global situation.

But, anyway, I don't think that's a reason to be 'optimistic' about the future. This attitude skips the growing inequality in many countries (even in the 'developed ones') as a result of the crisis and could be used to rest the importance it has to keep working on a better world. And it's true that we're, most of us, great ignorants, but the solution is not to just be positive.

I felt this presentation provided simplistic information that corrupts the entire idea of examining and knowing. Knowing requires engagement with the ideas being considered. The knowing is not solved with four catchy "tricks" that Ola suggested for overcoming ignorance. And the whole chimp conceit is old school and boring. These elites who can afford $4,200 to $17,000 tickets to a TED Conference, seem happy to find that the world is all just fine. Phew! Now they don't have to do much of anything, because it's all going so well, especially for them! Optimism is a crucial and necessary human quality, but fuzzy Pollyanna statistics about subjects of decreasing relevance only distracts from the crucial work that urgently needs to be done. Saving the planet, for example, feeding the exponentially growing population, contending with declining resources such as minerals, water, traditional food, clean air, the ocean's fish, our wildlife, bees, butterflies, the glaciers. I could go on. I surmise, though, that the Roslings may prefer that we remain ignorant of these problems in favor of simply keeping spirits up. What a disservice. Annie Dillard gives this advice: "You have enough experience by the time you're five years old. What you need is the library. What you have to learn is the best of what is being thought and said. If you had a choice between spending a summer in Nepal and spending a summer in the library, go to the library."- `Mornings Like This`, c.1995. But, I guess that's not catchy.

It's all great. But I could not help but be a little bit negative when I took my final take on the projection.

20 years from now there will still be people living on under a dollar. And Airplanes better become much less polluting.

Sorry for that.

This Ted Talk should include a warning label to let liberals and progressives know the content is offensive to their beliefs and not acceptable for public consumption.

The talk is inspiring, but... About the rest catching up with the west, how about the number without China? To me, it is more like China is catching up with the west.

I remember reading in the news that poverty population world wide drops, but only because China develops. Taking China out of the equation, the poverty population stays unchanged.

So it is hard to be not ignorant about the world after all, isn't it?

I'm shocked that in the multiple choice questions, not many people got them right! I was expecting more people to be a little more open-minded to be honest.

It would have been interesting to see how much people improved, or didn't improve, after they received the four tips on how to improve their score.

I love this talk, and others like it by Hans Rosling.

It is shocking to me that people in first world countries have let themselves become convinced that they are suffering horribly, and that things are "going to hell in a handbasket."

Try living even 150 years ago (before running water, germ theory, an understanding of weather systems, electricity, vaccinations and a million and one inventions). Go primitive camping for 2 weeks.

This presentation was much-needed relief from the usual doom and gloom that has pervaded our collective consciousness (not to mention the "end is near" nonsense that has been shouted by so many since Y2K).

I like people that don't act and think like the "mass": this is why I liked the talks, this is why I appreciate in general TED. Just one thing; I think this approach can workonly for few extremely general topic. And I think that to solve problem such asa inequality or poverty is also extremely importnt to watch what we can change by ourselves. So thanks for the useful insight and the great tool that you're giving us, but I think that a bigger problem is made by people that knows general trend and don't do nothing to use/leverage/change it.

I disagree that the assumptions have anything to do with removing ignorance. things don't always improve. air quality is getting worse ,global warming is getting worse. "improving" is a subjective term, he is making an assumption that question makers will only focus on things that are getting better.

In my own opinion ignorance exists because people want it to exist, it is commonly about ignoring your own reality and refusing to accept the facts. It is a defence mechanism used by people to hold back negative emotions that are caused by our reality.

Humans can see that there is mass injustice in the world, for example: people holding supreme status over others, people holding positions of self proclaimed authority, racism, sexism, ageism, objectification, mass animal abuse, bitching, resource inequality, mass poverty, mass habitat destruction for all animals, child abuse, partner abuse, verbal abuse, restrictions on the movement of races and their access to resources. imprisonment of the ill. restrictions on responsible freedom of movement and expression.I could go on.

Many of OUR daily actions in developed countries cause these things to happen or aid others who cause this to happen.

Ignorance is strongest on the subject of injustice/suffering.

Humans naturally do not like viewing suffering so must adopt BS stories/facts to create a new version of reality in their minds where they are not responsible for suffering. 
Ignorance is the chosen state of mind for the masses so that they do not have to accept facts that make them responsible for bad things. They can be happy about their daily lives without changing.

If people wish to achieve consciousness (as an opposite of ignorance), you must focus on thinking as much about the changeable negative elements in your reality as you do the good elements, you must think about why things make you feel bad. 
Ask yourself how would I solve this and how do my actions aid injustice? then you will be more open to truths.

I really like this talk. I think its importance is that we must have faith in improvements, so that we can contribute to a better world. If you lived in Vietnam, you would see people whining and complaining about a worse society everyday. Most of them just ignore the fact that the living conditions become better and better, despite occasional bad things (which just happen in any places in the world). And because of their negative belief towards the society, they refuse to contribute to boost it up ("nah, what can I do, oh, the society these days, oh, so bad, oh, what a mess, oh, let's just steal because everyone is doing the same thing, oh...").

Roslings ... Wouldn't you feel derogated ... offended ... if I treated you 2, as "Numbers" ... in a Statistical graph ... demonstrating # 1, and #2's numerical prowess ... a certain Awareness ... of a certain facet, of Reality ?

Don't you think ... Numbers and Statistics, do not apply, to Humans ... Because, there's much more to "The Human" ... than, mere graphics and figures ...

Numbers and Graphics ... are a device, to keep a tab, on very tiny ... infinitesimally small, figures ... That these Stats and Figures are essentially Economics related ... vis a vis ... An Ambition V/s the Division of Resources related, numbers and graphs ...

That ... Human's Existence ... is not ... in isolation ... It is within ... and relates ... a mathematically incalculable, a Graphically indemonstrable ... Figure !

The science of data collection and graphic analysis made easy by the Roslings. Just love facts presented so the vast majority can understand. 
So logical to get the bias out of presented data to understand all aspects of our world. 
This presentation was an eye opener and I feel less ignorant about the world- it put things in perspective- the best way to view anything. I'm feeling more optimistic for sure. 
Will follow the Roslings for more findings.

We so often encounter people's opinions that are not supported by information but rather by emotion and "propaganda". We often recognize that the opinion seems unlikely but too often we fail to ask them to support the opinion. These wrong ideas make it difficult to make good decisions when we allocate resources and when vote for on issues or candidates.

I wish the Rosling's very simple approach of teaching people to optimistic rather than pessimistic, would work. But even if he could influence a large group of Swedes, Americans, or chimps, replacing a negative bias with a positive bias would only help with some questions. And would be very wrong on many others. The only real solution would be to replace misinformation with factual information on a massive scale.

I hope he will take on that task!

I thoroughly disagree with the Roslings' findings and conclusions. I.e. I have seen reputable facts showing that the "have's" are globally quickly overtaking the "have nots". This optimistic analysis of "fact" charts is also greatly to be admonished in that it leads the so-called West to underestimate their own failure to see how their nations are quickly being overcome by the increasing levels of economics, environmental concerns and knowledge vis a vis other "developing nations." Attitude also is a big factor in analyzing statistics as our superior attitude leads us to blindness of the real facts.

There is a *huge* difference between being ignorant (not knowing something) and being mis-informed (holding onto something as fact that is actually not accurate or false). In the test data shown, the respondents don't have an option of "I don't know". They are forced to select an answer, even if they are not sure. Others, who may be mis-informed, may select a wrong answer, but are confident they are picking a correct answer. Hence, you cannot differentiate between those who are ignorant, versus mis-informed. I would argue that being mis-informed is much more dangerous than simply being ignorant. Being ignorant can be fixed by showing people facts and information. Mis-informed people often continue holding onto their incorrect beliefs even after knowing about the facts. See the current debates about the age of the earth, evolution, etc.

The wealth comparison is useless, because in '76 only reach people had plane tickets. Now they want us to believe that we are as rich as a person in '76 who had a plane ticket, because we have a plane ticket too? NO we would be as rich if we had something that only rich people have NOW. Like owning a Mercedes or BMW.

their talks are very humorous

very good lecture

I am always amazed to see your presentation and crispiness of data analysis. Many thanks!

I am concerned that this presentation, as good as it was, furthers the intuition that we can continue to develop on the current economical scale. As it is true that the humps are one hump, it is true that there is a gap. The idea of being able to fly on vacation is because of cheaper technologies and not a matter of disposable income. The rich now own their own aircraft. Do we continue to exploit until we all own aircraft?

Consider that the scale does not move from the 1975 income; as well as, the amount earned is not accurately indicated in their graphs. Yes we are making progress in terms of violence, poverty, and social equality. Yes the media has to big of an influence on our perceptions. But there is a gap and new standards continue to increase greed. Surely we are not here for, and the best thing we can do is have, a system that gives so much to so few. Sensationalism of the media, the dream of riches, is promoted at the end of their talk. Social development needs to be first. Not with just the rich and poor or educated and uneducated, but economic development and the environment as well.

Social is the interactions of organisms with other organisms whether they are aware of it or not, are voluntary or not. I find it perplexing that they discuss inaccurate perceptions and end in promoting one.

The assumption is made that everything is getting better denies what almost all scientists agree on, that we are in big trouble if we don't change our carbon output. We can't just keep consuming more and more and assume that everything is getting better. The fact that more people are flying is another problem in terms of planetary health. Yes, some things have improved, but our problems need to be addressed, and they are big.

Maybe ignorance is a good thing. If people knew things were getting better they would stop helping and just pat themselves on the back.

BEST OF TED!!

"Fact based decisions to drive us forward."

The easiest thing is to blame the media and the schools. I don't know much about schools today except that one has to actively learn there and read a lot beside the dictate of curriculum. 
I know more about media: their job is to give the most interesting/important/scandalous news of the day and not to sum up or update our general knowledge. These have to be learned by reading, reading, reading. 
We ourselves - and that includes every single one of us - are responsible for what we know or don't know. 
The blame is on us! But that is a good thing because we can change it at our will.

Since the title was "How Not to be Ignorant" and a tutorial was presented on how to beat the chimps it would have been nice to ask the audience three more questions to see if the lessons were absorbed.

Same questions, over and over again, same answers. That's why I do not follow TED any longer. Hans is someone who is trying to bring attention to the issue, not to focus it on himself but he was turned into a celebrity anyway.

The answer to the question could be... to bring discussion down, hide it, act on intuition, we need no consciousness... than we can finally be more ignorant.

BTW from anthropological perspective it is worth to take a closer look on relation between chimps and baboons, not human.

i like it

good talk.

These are the sort of....' teachers'... that I want...

Mr. Patel has brought up the essential point--the basis of Mr. Rosling's dissembling is his inappropriate and non discriminating usage of the phrases " being ignorant" and " being misinformed." I can only hope that our replies to his specious pronouncements can be fixed by informing him of the facts.

There is so much being talked about thats blowing right by the majority of people working in their 40 hour work cycles and not hearing anything but what they want to get for their efforts . 
There is a difference in societies that are sustainable in the world if you look at the fertility charts , it clearly shows that developed nations are sustainable in population growth , so the policy of developing the undeveloped nations so they can evolve with wisdom and understand the concept of the finite element of their lives means there are limits to their lives I bet they will self regulate too .

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/08/opinion/gilding-earth-limits/index.html

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44990504/ns/us_news-life/t/seven-big-problems-billion-people/

PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHATS GOING ON , http://www.waronhumans.com/

Hans Rosling for president!

This gave me chills! It was so beautifully done! Thank you so much!

That's so true. You did so huge and important work. Very very good Job!

For a student of history, this trend is obvious. This is an excellent presentation. Thanks.

Very interesting but for me it yielded the obvious. However, if the data could also reflect how much of each country's population are within the poor end, middle, and wealthy end, it would yield a substantive perspective as to the demographics root cause, e.g. economics vs. political structure.

Fantastic! This is the anecdote to the selfie obsessed western world.

How do you decide which home to visit for photo. 
I can see you only choose poor families in India. 
It is sad and disappointing that you people only see India's poor. 
Disappointing.

Great presentation on how to shape our own point of view of the world and the current socio-economic status in the world.

He made my day! Many Thanks :)

I found the presentation very sensational, hard to believe that the man-made problems have not grown... and wonder if the presenter would find a different set of statistics-to-prove-his-point for a less known problem, under the ocean -- http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_skerry_reveals_ocean_s_glory_and_horror?language=en#t-192703 
Maybe the world has turned on its head for so long -- that nowadays even the pope is more in touch with reality ... https://www.facebook.com/DavidSuzuki/posts/10153418060283874

is fun! good talk.

Being informed is always important.

A smart person coming from a first world country can quickly go downhill. This is due to the fact that when one (growing up) has had a good life and seen the best things in their environment, they quickly form an opinion on others and the rest of the world.

This leads to them not needing to improve because they think they know they're the best not knowing it's the system that has made it possible for them.

Slowly, others will catch up and they (first world people) will be left behind (or maybe others have already been in front of them for a while and first world people are still living in their own deluded perfect world).

Always keep you're cup half empty so you will always improve. A full cup can never be filled with more water as it will only overflow.

Hans Rosling's presentation is very informative for me.

Smart and catchy, but This analysis does not look at relative poverty and the real question of inequity : unfair inequalities. extreme -WB defined- poverty or people flying in planes for holidays( connected , though, to intergenerational inequity by carbon footprint) are only one side of the picture or curve ( which by the way is nor as simolistic as shown) and equity is about the relation of the differences. Coming soon.

What if when asked a problem, instead of simply choosing an unsure answer based on intuition, we answered "I don't know" or "I recognize that I'm unsure", and look up the answer on the internet? The trends this talk illuminate are very interesting, but I think their approach of trying to correct via other generalizations is limited at best. To truly end ignorance, we need to be able to recognize when we DON'T know something, and be knowledgable about how to find the answer, rather than going with a guess and saying it is right.

That being said, an entertaining talk, and I'm glad people are thinking about the problem in creative terms.

good one

Very funny talk and inspiring as they consider ignorance as a focus. But then I ponder that even this Ted Talk is making its own ignorance. Hans and Ola used such a way to convince people that they are ignored about so many facts. The point of the project is to help people get the right views of the world without human biases, misleadings by media those sort of things. But even such numbers do not necessarily capture the full dimension of the problem, because they are highly uncertain.

I also believe that the data in the talk is based on the percentage such as the one about Natural Disaster. The world population is increasing so even though Natural Disasters happen with a same time pattern, it seems Natural Disasters kill less. I don't believe that when people think the world has more people being killed by Natural Disasters is a presentation of ignorance. It presents a view of worry and sense of crisis by the single individuals.

This is the diversity of thoughts, diversity creates prosperity and innovative ideas. Different people have different attitude towards a thing, or a fact. Even if people know most of the world is improving in the Standard of living, assuming that all the people are behaving rationally, they appear to act in a "random walk", like the market will do in most of the time: the past gives no better indication than a coin flip of the future direction of the price of a stock. As the Talk goes to the last part when Ola forecasted the GDP per capita in the next decade. This might be helpful but it is not very convincible.

What I want to ask is how do you define Ignorance? 
Still, great and inspiring talk! Love the way of presentation.

Very nice talk as always. Such data is really very important in almost every possible way.

But then after the data Ola seems to fall in the trap of the fractions and percentages. For instance, yes the fraction of people able to afford international flight will increase in the 'rest of the world' but then the population there is also increasing. If we look at the distribution it seems that almost 70% people in the EU+USA can afford international flying but the rest of the world this fraction is still tiny. Not to forget the skew of the distribution.

My point is that when dealing with large numbers it is not sufficient to know the percentages, you need to worry about the actual numbers. For instance, if there is a problem with only 1% people in India and China, this is a small problem in terms of fractions but in terms of absolute number than number is way too big.

Still, great work by the gapminder foundation.

The presentation reminds me of "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley. "The world is getting better and you need to recognize it by facts" is what I learned from it.

The Rosling’s Intuitive Statistical Good News People Centric Approach: 
From the Ted Talk I gather that

One, Most things human are improving. Two, We are equalizing into a normalised one hump camel, (a statisticians dream). Three, Knowledgeable society is now preceding both its wealth and its resource acquisition. And Four Sharks kill few.

But what about an intuitively non-people centric approach:

Four, Sharks kill few because there are now so few sharks. Three, We Humans are getting very good at sharing information amongst each other on how to best ‘take’ from the world. Two, Our one Hump Humanity is blandly grouping together a globalized sameness through a massive eco-diversity die off. And One, Humanities self improvement experiment appears to be in equilibrium with a Fading World

Slapping each other on the back and congratulating ourselves on how safe we’ve become from sharks, how full our stomachs are, how caring we’ve become and how an enlighten society we are- seems a small consolation when your city is Pompeii and the ash that has been fertilizing your fields is from Vesuvius.

To enlighten ourselves beyond our ignorance of our relatively minor human scale matters and yet ignore the magnitude scale increase in Globalization consequence and urgency- such as Ozone Depletion, Water Table Depletions and Contaminations, Mass Extinction, Desertification, Global warming, Ocean Acidification and the yet unknown... well such minor enlightens as ‘how many Girls are attending School’- well when this is not distinctly contrasted with these other greater challenges, or these higher scale issues are only offered using some vague throw away acknowledgement of non-improving problems, well then these ‘Feel Good Statistics’ begin to reek of “Feel Good Spin”. This puts me in mind of what beautiful sunsets there were after the Mount Vesuvius Eruption.

Offered, an additional simple catch phrase on the nature of intuition and ignorance: ‘Scale Matters’.

Ola's portion of this talk instantly put me in mind of Daniel Dennett's book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. I haven't read this book yet, but I did watch a long video on YouTube of Dennett presenting this book as part of the series Talks at Google.

Recently I watched the video War Made Easy (narrated by Sean Penn) which is so understated in the analysis it presents that it constantly left me howling (in fairness, perhaps it adopted this stance on budgetary advice from legal). In this edifice of montage there's a sequence of clips covering many different American presidential regimes and many different American news reporting networks in which a photogenic newsreader attributes a nugget of political spin disguised as information with the phrase "according to government officials". "OMG!" I raged to myself, "that's even worse than Wikipedia." On Wikipedia, this kind of vague attribution would receive the red template treatment within minutes or hours.

Either our major news networks need to be better than Wikipedia, or content from these media outlets needs to cease being part of an educated diet. The best possible outcome of Ola's work to bring these simple intuition pumps into the world spotlight is that a factually forearmed world citizenry begins to demand the more of same from the evening news.

(Test) question: 
Did this talk scored better than the average chimp?

(certainly not better than the average Hans Rosling)

I'm agree with the ideas or shorcuts of the author. In fact I think that those rules if we apply ourselves in our lifes we could succeed.

What did you do, hire the optimists club? DO i SENSE BIASED DATA HERE IN PLAY? With 30 REAL global disaster 'tipping points' now past us, of which 3 may be retrievable. 
The biggest ones looming in the immediate future 
1. Melted Methane Clathrates (permafrost) 
2. Exponential population growth that is nearing it's limits of both food and water; 
3. Endemic Radiation has already poisoned large parts of the pacific and most of the sailors of the Ronnie Raygun carrier task group, sent way too close to harm's way 
The Pacific has (by my calculation) 2.56E13 radioactive 'things' in each and every liter...and it's spreading. The glaciers that water and feed 3 billion people or more about to run dry...then they die... 
What are you so damned impressed by? The latest consumer zip-i-ditty-doo-da? BFD. With human extinction now quite possible within mere decades, just WHAT has gotten better by so much that it overwhelms something as AWESOME as the DEATH of LIFE?? Please, do tell.

The scale used to show income distribution is utterly misleading. The head of the camel should at least be ten times farther from the hump. There should be more talk on how everyone can chip in, regardless of background and upbringing, to bring in the humongous income disparity.

I think this could change the mind of the people about the world, but I'm not sure is for the better. If we generally think that everything will be better by magic there will be no action.

Also, "lets make a test that will make everyone believes the same" and make it obligatory. Now to be able to work for any company your small backgrounds ideas do not count.

So according to the statistics (> 3 min.) both World Wars were nothing special, just average. And on the subject of poverty, we have to agree, that no one is really poor -- at least no one worth speaking of. And on the other subjects,... Achoo! Achoo! Achoo! sorry, I am allergic to bullshit.

Respectfully beg to differ --

Hans said, "We still have almost a billion"...

[My response] That is 15% of the people in the world living Today in Extreme poverty — not having enough food for the day. 
=== 
[I've edited Ola's remarks] Ola, remarking --- So how do we solve such problems?

Practical tricks with these four rules of thumb; This is how you can generalize. 
1. Everything's worse. 
--- Everything is getting better. 
2. The rich and poor gap is increasing. 
--- Most people are in the middle. 
3. Only rich nations can afford social development, girls in school and 
ready for natural disasters. 
--- The majority already have this. 
4. Some things are not so important. 
--- Assume you're going to exaggerate the problem.

They don't apply to everything. It's a systematic approach.

If you have a fact-based worldview of today, you might have a chance to understand what's coming next in the future.

How the Rest and the West(the EU and North America) compares in terms of how rich you are. These are the people who can afford to fly abroad with an airplane for a vacation. In 1975, only 30 percent of them lived outside the West . That has changed today. In 2014, it's 50/50. The Western domination is over, as of today. That's nice. So what's going to happen next? In 2020, it's 57%, 2025, it's 63%, 2030, it's 68%, and in 2035 the West is outnumbered in the rich consumer market. These are just projections of GDP per capita into the future. 73%* of the rich consumers are going to live outside North America and Europe.

I think it's a good idea for a company to use this certificate to make sure to make fact- based decisions in the future. 
=== 
[My response] The presentation gives the unique impression that things are getting better for the Rest of the World, if We but think they are.

*Constructs from statistics show trends based on current events.

Respectfully I beg to differ.

Sharks, only bother those in or on the water. Mostly in. 
The other stats are ignorant as they have erroneous parameters. 
Hans and Ola are constructing stats by using the wrong premise. 
It must be the successes of the past for Hans that has clouded his vision.

Try separating victims of genocide, and other politically caused atrocities from your more mundane populations. Value the victims, versus those who live within the protective umbrella of the aggressors. Re-sort, and you will undoubtedly come up with a better TED talk.

Sorry I cannot like this talk. The past ones have been great.

ps: You might want to include the American Indians as victims. 
They surely are.

Talks like this makes me question/distrust education and news... 
Hans and Ola might be able to spend all of their time to gain this data (and knowledge) of the world. But by far most people get their knowledge from their education and the news that they follow.

Please enforce the media and schools to actually have knowledge about the world... I don't like being misinformed and I definitely don't want to be misinformed by sources that I am expected to trust.

enjoyable presentation

Sample is size is off, I thought of the questions from a global perspective.

Great talk - I like how it highlights our biases against the real situation. Finally some good news and reason to be positive and up-beat!

I have some concerns though, similar to Jaroslav's. A lot of the development we are celebrating (e.g. higher incomes/ greater economic output) is not accompanied with increasing biodiversity. So if those two trends continue aren't both systems destined to collapse?

Another thing about the statistics, I am reminded of this video speaking about wealth distribution and the distribution of power (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slTF_XXoKAQ). It basically says that wealth distribution in america is very skewed, assuming this generalisation can be applied to the 'west', does that mean these statistics are at odds with each other? Or is wealth distribution fundamentally different from income distribution?

I mostly agree :-) things are changing for better BUT (yes it is a great but) there are other stats and facts. For instance climate change, i missed it in his great presentation. And the income inequality didnt consider feel inflation of needs (which is ussualy bigger than the general one) and mostly the fact we could feed this left 1/4 of the graph if we didnt look on money but on our technological possibilities as Resource Based Economy proposes.

What a great presentation!

Excellent and interesting presentation