
Hans Rosling doesn’t consider himself an optimist or pessimist but ‘possibilist’ - devnonymous
http://www.nature.com/news/three-minutes-with-hans-rosling-will-change-your-mind-about-the-world-1.21143
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awicz
The criticisms of Rosling seem to surround around him painting with a broad
brush and forming distilled conclusions. The trouble is that if Rosling were
to dive into the details of these data and leave out conclusions the average
person listening would get lost, have no actionable thesis, or both. I would
include myself to be among these people.

The admirable thing about his presentations are that he encourages his
listeners to trust data and question their preconceptions.

Certainly his methodolgy is not perfect. However, given how the public forms
decisions right now (See US presidential election), I can't help but think
this mentality is exactly what is needed.

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Jill_the_Pill
Amen. We have a lot of people digging through details in obscurity; we need a
spokesman like this, of good will and broad understanding, instead of the
usual shysters. There is a solid need for both roles; you don't criticize an
epidemiologist for not being a surgeon.

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criddell
What a great article.

Two things jumped out at me. First, I love the resolution in the opening story
about the machete-wielding mob. The power of a single old woman to defuse a
dangerous situation is fascinating. As a person in an industry built on the
backs of youth, I sometimes wonder how wasteful we are being by focusing on
the future and forgetting about the past.

Second, it seems that Rosling's great superpower is communication. I love the
Radio Lab podcast and am a firm believer that for a scientist, being able to
tell stories about what you do is almost as important as the science.

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tim333
Rosling's cheery stats are a good antidote to the usual horrors you see in the
news.

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dahart
News is a business that needs to grab attention to survive, it has always had
a built-in bias toward horrors and drama because those get attention. News
rarely talks about how most things you care about are slowly and steadily
getting better on average over time.

~~~
kqr
This is why I enjoyed reading The Economist. I might not have agreed with
their editorial slant, but I loved how they didn't care much for human
interest stories (or at least marginalised them) and did report on things
slowly getting better all around the world.

(Stopped reading not because I was discontent, rather because of a lack of
time.)

~~~
lobster_johnson
The Economist is also one of the most strongly opinionated magazines currently
being published. Almost every article says, quite loudly, what they think
governments should be doing with whatever problem they're describing. Whereas
the NY Times, for example, is much more understated, and will, if they offer a
solution (or opinion) at all, outline the various pros/cons and leave the
reader to infer what they really think.

While I like The Economist a lot, my preferred source of reporting and
analysis on news, culture and politics is The New York Review of Books. Their
stable of superb, intellectual writers tackle all sorts of things (books,
ironically, being pretty far down on the list) in a highly readable way. The
Economist can get a little dry and monotonous after a while.

~~~
anonymousDan
How do you find the NYRoB compares to its London equivalent (which I really
like)?

~~~
lobster_johnson
LRB is great, too. I prefer NYRB, though I can't pinpoint anything specific;
it's just that in any given issue, LRB tends to have a higher ratio of
articles that I find too dry and academic.

As you probably know, LRB was originally created by NYRB (it was initially
published as a supplement), so they have a shared history and kinship. And of
course, there are a ton of writers who are published in both, such as Tim
Parks, Neal Ascherson, Tony Judt (RIP!) and Jonatham Lethem.

The only reason I don't read both faithfully is that there's just not enough
time in the world.

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philipkglass
"Possibilism" is a good way to think about the world: weighing what paths are
opened by changes in scientific knowledge or human societies and what paths
are blocked, but refusing to stay anchored to a conclusion just because it was
true at one particular time in the past. It's unfortunate that "realist" has
connotations of cynicism, because Rosling is a good realist in that he is more
willing to discard conclusions than data.

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Fraterkes
I don't have any specific critisism of Rosling (He seems very capable in a lot
of ways). I think the part that many people find problematic is that he doesnt
just present himself as a scientist but as someone who can interpret the data.
And not just a normal interpreter but someone who has insights that almost
nobody else has. You can argue wether this is true, but the fact is that this
gives him an insane amount of credibility, and a kind of power that a non-
expert should maybe use a little more sparingly.

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agumonkey
A combinatorialist

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dang
Since the title and subtitle are baity, we switched to the photo caption.

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chiefalchemist
Cause v correlation. Symptom v disease. We don't struggle with "facts" as much
as we too often fail to apply enough critical thinking to get the real story
identified and in context.

Humans are shallow. We know this.

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ebbv
My problem with Rosling is that he furthers one of the problems with our
modern discourse; the assumption that a given dataset inevitably leads to one
conclusion. It's not true. I wish it were but it isn't.

The same statistics about mass incarceration of African American males in the
US that leads me to conclude that we have an issue of systemic racism leads
far right people to conclude that African American males have an inherent
tendency toward criminality. I would call that a gross misrepresentation of
the data, but it is what happens.

Rosling, in my mind, is guilty of misrepresenting some data, and I'm sure in
his mind my conclusions based on the same data are equally ill informed.

But Rosling tends, for me, not to make convincing arguments. He tends to throw
up some graphs and say "Look! It's obvious we should do what I say!!"

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naasking
> leads far right people to conclude that African American males have an
> inherent tendency toward criminality.

I think you're being uncharitable. Conservatives wouldn't claim that African
American males have _inherent_ criminality. That would be unbelievably racist
on its own. They instead say that African American males are simply _more
likely_ to commit crimes, which seems statistically true, if a tad misleading.

Of course, you are both probably wrong and the true underlying cause is
actually economic disparity, which would encompass both interpretations.
People who are more poor simply commit more crimes out of desperation, and
African Americans are poorer due to historical reasons stemming from racism.

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thesimpsons1022
i believe he said "far right". this could be interpreted as anything from tea
party to neo nazis and fascists depending on what "far" means. However i
wouldn't take it to be directed to all "Conservatives".

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naasking
Could be. "Far right" has many different meanings depending on who you ask.

