factfulness #2

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: factfulness (part 2) 🤔 

continuing from a previous post, i’m going to explain 3 more of “factfulness’” 10 instincts that distort our perspective of the world.

4) the fear instinct 😟 

similar to the negativity instinct, this describes our tendency to focus on frightening aspects and associate it with risk. i disagree with the following quote given the current desperate struggle for a ceasefire against gaza’s genocide, but even 2 years ago it probably would have rung very true: “the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.”

your parents have probably given you the “when i was your age, we played outside all day” lecture, but at the same time, your parents probably didn’t even let you do that because it was too dangerous. are our neighbourhoods more dangerous than they were 30 years ago, or are we more paranoid and less equipped with common sense? perhaps it’s a bit of both.

5) the size instinct 📏 

i’m guilty of over exaggerating on multiple accounts, but this instinct of getting things out of proportion, or misjudging the size of things is very common amongst us all, and can lead to an unfounded sense of doom in certain cases.

“the two aspects of the size instinct, together with the negativity instinct, make us systematically underestimate the progress that has been made in the world.”

just judging lone numbers like # of immigrants or # of suicides per year is misleading. always look for comparisons. what was that number last year? that change is a more significant insight.

6) the generalization instinct 📦️ 

this is where stereotypes and our subconscious biases sprout from. it can make us assume that everything in one category is similar. worse, it can make us jump to conclusions about a whole category based on a few, or just one, unusual example.

we can’t stop generalization to be honest, labels still have their value in bringing order, but we certainly can keep breaking down these categories to individuals and more specific groupings.

these thought processes come so natural to us, but we don’t think of the small nuances within them that might be contributing to negativity or bias. it’s interesting to dismantle the way we think. last few instincts will be touched on in a post later on!

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