Society & Culture
Are natural disasters increasing? More people getting killed? Violent crime increasing? Are more people poor? The short answer. No Most every aspect of life is much better than it was 50 yrs ago & getting better every year. The facts are extremely clear on this. Why do people think things are worse? Outdated data, personal bias, & incorrect perceptions created by the media. The world is NOT Going to Hell, DON'T INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE! Use the Website link on the Itunes page for more info & pics ------- SHOW NOTES ------- The inspiration for this episode was this wonderful Ted Talk given by Hans & Ela Rosling. They are father and son scientific researchers that study world wide statistic and historical data. They help governments, companies and other organizations understand trends in human behavior. This presentation offers fascinating insights people's general ignorance of some basic statistic about natural disasters, income, and life span. How not to be ignorant about the world Link to Image 1. Are Deaths from Natural Disasters increasing? No. But around 70% of people think they are. More Chimpanzees go the answer right than people. LOL Link to Image 2. Are Hurricanes becoming more frequent? Nope, we just hear about them more and more. Here is a link to some great data from the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. The NO&AA is a bureau of the US Government. You can see from this data that Hurricanes (Normal or Major, Landfall or Ocean bound) are no more frequent than they have ever been. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html (We will make a chart of this data table soon) 3. This is an interesting slide. It shows peoples perception of crime getting worse vs the actual stats. Interesting that the huge jump in the perception of crime increasing is in 2001... Link to Image 4. 95% of people surveyed in the USA believe poverty is on the increase or is not getting better. Again Chimpanzees answer more correctly. Link to Image 5. A common view point you probably hear quite a lot is the income gap. How there is no more middle class anymore... Not true. Most people in the world are in the middle. Yes a small group of people are extremely wealthy sure, but most people in the world are in the middle. Link to Image 6. Another example of people's incorrect views. As you can see the majority of people surveyed believe only 20% of children in the world are vaccinated. Why are they so far off from the facts. Um.... Social media??? Cable News??? DON'T INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE!!! Link to Image