The final session at this year’s Rhodes Forum Technology & Society featured Gapminder, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting a “fact-based worldview” for a more informed global society. Led by Anna Rosling Rönnlund, co-founder of Gapminder, the session highlighted the importance of accessible data and accurate knowledge as antidotes to pessimism and misunderstanding in our perception of global issues, an outlook often reinforced by daily news cycles.
Gapminder was established with a mission to foster understanding through data visualizations and interactive tools, allowing people to see the world’s progress on major social and economic indicators. “Today, we live in a world filled with crises—climate, economic, health—that demand global collaboration,” Rönnlund noted. “Yet when people look at data, many find it stressful and pretty boring, so they turn away. But I think that’s a big problem,” she continued, “because by using data, we can see that the world doesn’t always look as bad as we think.”
Gapminder’s approach centres on addressing the gap between public perceptions and statistical reality. Their surveys reveal the extent of misconception, often skewed towards the negative, with professionals like those attending the conference often performing worse than random in questions relating to the sustainable development goals. For example, when attendees were asked about the percentage of the world’s population living in low-income countries, most respondents guessed far too high, unaware that only 9% of people currently fall into this category.
The session also explored common cognitive biases that distort our understanding of data. Gapminder has developed a series of “thinking habits” to counteract these biases. Rönnlund referred to the “negativity instinct,” a tendency to focus on dramatic, negative news stories rather than broader, positive trends. “When we think of the world today, we get this feeling of hopelessness,” she shared. Yet, according to Rönnlund, “when you look at the data, things aren’t as hopeless as they seem. We’re improving on so many fronts—poverty, health, education—yet these aren’t the stories we hear.”
Rönnlund emphasized how Gapminder’s tools help people become aware of these biases. The Gapminder “Worldview Upgrader” quiz, for instance, reveals common misperceptions in a series of questions about global trends and statistics. “We want people to ask themselves: if we’re so wrong about basic facts, maybe our understanding of the world needs a serious upgrade,” she said. In one example, Rönnlund explained how survey data showed that most people greatly overestimate the number of refugees worldwide, believing it’s a major percentage of the global population when it’s actually 0.6%. “When you realize this,” she noted, “it changes how you approach these global issues. You start seeing the nuances instead of focusing on exaggerated fears.”
Looking to the future, she expressed optimism about how artificial intelligence might aid our efforts to access and interpret complex data more accurately. “AI should help us make better decisions by keeping track of the information we’re bad at remembering,” she suggested. “If we use it wisely, AI can help us bridge the gap between how we think the world is and what the data actually says about it.”
In her concluding remarks, Rönnlund urged listeners to approach the world with “humility, curiosity, and hope.” As she put it, “Hopelessness is probably the worst feeling ever because it’s hard to innovate and collaborate if we feel that it’s all pointless. But if we can shift our thinking just a bit—be curious, humble, and hopeful—we can change the world for the better.”
The Gapminder session left attendees with a refreshed perspective on global data, as well as tools and habits to cultivate a more balanced, hopeful view of the world. As Rönnlund pointed out, “The most important thing is to double-check our assumptions and realize that we’re often wrong. Just by knowing that, we can start to ask better questions and, hopefully, make better decisions.”