What is Reddit's opinion of Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think?

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Factfulness is a good book if you are looking for some optimism in the world today, it brings a lot of facts of what has been improving throughout the years, like decrease in poverty, increase in girls education numbers, etc

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0756J1LLV/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_N33NJDWZZH6XK1NGVDFH

It was St Mary of Bethany who did the anointing:

Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always. (Jn 12:1–8.)

I think the part about the poor is that some people are unwilling to cooperate, and use whatever money you give them, for, besides what they need to stay alive, drugs, alcohol, conspicuous consumption, gambling… They will certainly always be poor as long as they maintain this behavior, which would probably take a miracle to change. And some people are unable to develop the skills they need to live productive, independent lives, so they should be in some kind of institution, preferably (to me) a monastery or charitable house run by a monastery. Unless they have rich (probably individual) benefactors, they will always be poor. Other people are able to be helped out of poverty by charity. This happened to my family (a quarter of my ancestry). They came from Belarus and were coal miners in Appalachia, and had 11 children. My grandma said the only Christmas present she would get was an apple.

We still have to give charity even to the uncooperative though. Example:

“St John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria…considered his chief task to be charitable and to give help all those in need. At the beginning of his patriarchal service he ordered his stewards to compile a list of all the poor and downtrodden in Alexandria, which turned out to be over seven thousand men. The saint ordered that all of these unfortunates be provided for each day out of the church’s treasury.”

“Twice during the week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, he emerged from the doors of the patriarchal cathedral, and sitting on the church portico, he received everyone in need. He settled quarrels, helped the wronged, and distributed alms. Three times a week he visited the sick-houses, and rendered assistance to the suffering. It was during this period that the emperor Heraclius led a tremendous army against the Persian emperor Chosroes II. The Persians ravaged and burned Jerusalem, taking a multitude of captives. The holy Patriarch John gave a large portion of the church treasury for their ransom.”

“The saint never refused suppliants. One day, when the saint was visiting the sick, he met a beggar and commanded that he be given six silver coins. The beggar changed his clothes, ran on ahead of the Patriarch, and again asked for alms. Saint John gave him six more silver coins. When, however, the beggar sought charity a third time, and the servants began to chase the fellow away, the Patriarch ordered that he be given twelve pieces of silver, saying, ‘Perhaps he is Christ putting me to the test.’ Twice the saint gave money to a merchant that had suffered shipwreck, and a third time gave him a ship belonging to the Patriarchate and filled with grain, with which the merchant had a successful journey and repaid his obligations.”

Notice in the icon though he is wearing shiny vestments, and holding a jeweled gold Gospel book. Those cost over $1000 in these days of mass-printing. Back then, it was written by hand. The cheapest Gospels book was 3 nomismata, 13.5 g of gold, $766.89 in today’s money. So I would think, in total, the Gospels book he had, with gold and probably jewels on it, would have cost at least $2000 in today’s money. So the Church did not have to sell its valuables to give lots of charity. And civilization is much more prosperous now, everywhere, explained in this book. So there is no way we could need to sell church valuables. If we need to sell anything, sell our own things, or better, buy less to give more.

It it were wrong to use expensive items to honor God, who would we honor with them instead? (No one can be more deserving.) Or we should destroy expensive things to keep them from God? Or sell them to sinful people who will use them for idolatry or erroneous worship? Or not buy them even if Christians are selling them? Or let the sinful monopolize the luxury-good market? Or, maybe worst of all, steal from God by taking consecrated gifts out of the church? (People gave those things to God, so now they are His.) It was the Bolsheviks who stole from God. None of that makes sense to me.

I guess there must be such things as ecclesiastical luxury-goods, i.e. church items we buy more of with an increase in income, e.g. there are plain, silver-plate budget chalices, and Fabergé-type gold chalices, and vestments that might be $387.99 for a basic set, or might be $2529.99 for the fanciest set with all the best options. For some reason, Roman Catholic vestments seem to be more expensive than these, no idea why, since there aren’t nearly as many parts or decorations and they look like they are usually just tacky polyester. Those Russian ones are rayon, but it looks as good as silk to me when I see them in church. Romans should hire Russians to make their vestments. 😄 Anyway, I’m a Byzantine Catholic, and use examples I’m most familiar with.

But they don’t have to be expensive, e.g. the widow’s mite was objectively small but big for her. And the Sofrino icon studio (my favorite) makes very inexpensive gold-foil, mass-printed icons (the flat ones with lots of gold, e.g. a couple angels on that page) that are the most beautiful available besides some of the hand-painted ones with covers of precious metals, the most expensive kind. Like $5–$60 vs. $100s–$1000s. This is my favorite one I have, got it extra-cheap from a scratch-and-dent sale at church. But I’ve gotten gifts of icons hand-painted on Mt Athos with silver, jeweled covers. Still prefer the budget studio of Sofrino. Beauty is the important part. Expense just generally makes beauty easier to achieve, and able to ramp up the size.

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Ek het dit eers raakgelees in 'n boek van Hans Rosling wat Doctors without Borders help stig het en betrokke was by die Wêreldgesondheidsorganisasie. Hy het 'n NGO begin genaamd Gapminder (met ondersteuning van Bill Gates) wat data van gesaghebbende bronne lees en gekombineerde datastelle bou wat tendense visualiseer.

Hier kan jy die data aflaai. Baie daarvan kom van die Wêreldbank se World Development Index. Hier is 'n mooi animasie van worldbank.org wat wys hoe gemiddelde inkomstes in die laaste 30 jaar verbeter het.

Hier is 'n artikel van sowat vyf jaar gelede wat Rosling se bevindings opsom. Hy is gekritiseer dat hy soms 'n rooskleurige prentjie van die wêreld skets, maar die punt van die boek in elk geval is om wanpersepsies wat die algemene bevolking het oor wêreldprobleme aan te spreek, spesifiek oor sekere probleme wat mense oor die algemeen dink is slegter as wat dit regtig is. (Jy kan hier gaan loer na die Kindle sample as jy wil.)

The world is far more just now than at any prior time in human history. It just doesn't feel like it because you get your information from sources whose business model is to frighten and enrage the public with bad news in order to sell clicks and ads.

When you look at the actual data, you'll see that we've made astounding progress, and things are only getting better. We're not done yet of course, there's still plenty of work to do. But knowing how far we've come is crucial.

Stop getting played by people who profit from your ignorance and anger, and start educating yourself. Two great books for this are:

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better-ebook/dp/B0756J1LLV

https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0143111388/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=enlightenment+now&qid=1624127715&sr=8-1

No idea if these will transfer to your life, but for me...

Learn to talk about books

I had to teach myself to be good at small talk as an adult, to fit into adult society better. Perhaps the most useful part was the subcategory of small talk about books.

A feedback loop is eventually created, where you heard about interesting books, so you read those, so you talk about them with co-workers or other people, so they share the books they have been reading, and one of those sounds good to you,...

Depending on your job getting this cycle started might be as easy as an e-mail to all your co-workers asking what interesting books they plan to read during the summer. Or you might visit a local bookstore or library and ask what books their book discussion clubs have been talking about. Or you might look at the Amazon lists of most popular books in various categories.

Personally, as an example of a book that almost everyone finds interesting, and is easy to talk about, I know of no better start than <em>Factfulness</em>.

Tangentially, I discovered I would read more with an e-book reader. My hands get tired holding a book open for hours. But I know lots of people that love the feel of holding a book while reading.

Find some games

The pandemic was great for World of Warcraft. All sorts of people joined that game, and the overall friendliness of the community blossomed. (The long-time players are more often jaded, treating the game as a chore to do as efficiently as possible instead of a wondrous world to explore.)

For many people pencil-and-paper role-playing games work great. These games, like WoW, are often built for people with poor social skills. Your character does certain things well, and when it's time to do them your character has a time in the spotlight. The gamemaster is in charge of keeping the conversation going so you merely react to what happens in the story. A little resource management gives everyone things to talk about (spend our gold on this magic item? use up a charge from our wand of fireballs on this monster?).

Collectable card games are another nerdy game that works because the game itself gives the players structure for talking to each other.

But any game, online or in-person, will have its following. Your goal is not to get good at the game. Your goal is to find a game that makes stories to share: "Yesterday I was playing it and then this-and-that happened! It was so cool!" And then the other people who enjoy the game will share their stories.

Join a dojo

I am extra sure this is not for everyone, but it's for a surprising number of people.

A good dojo is all about people helping each other by providing resistance for their partners. Whether you are holding a pad someone is kicking at, or wrestling on the mat to learn jujitsu, the structure is similar to above. The instructor is telling people the broad story of what to do (like the RPG GM) and you and a partner work out the details. There is a sense of progress, and little things happen that become stories to talk about with the other dojo members.

The dojo will probably have the extra benefit of someone knowledgeable about posture. If your physical posture is part of the unconscious signals you are sending off that make strangers avoid you, there will probably be someone at any good dojo that has overcome that issue and will be happy to share how they did so.

I read Hans Rosling's Factfulness - and as a result I realize that "all the terrible things going on in the world" are a result of the Media giving us access to All The Terrible Things Going On In The World in pursuit of the almighty dollar. But on average, things in the world are SO much better than they've ever been.

They've even got some online tools you can use at Gapminder.org

Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better-ebook/dp/B0756J1LLV

https://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Like-Leonardo-Vinci-ebook/dp/B000SEFNF0/

https://hbr.org/2014/09/how-philosophy-makes-you-a-better-leader

https://www.amazon.com/Microserfs-Novel-Douglas-Coupland-ebook/dp/B004W2YZ0I

Write: Your 1, 3 and 5-year plans. Write plans for achieving them

Watch:

The Big Short

The Smartest Guys in the Room

Go to: Industry events, user groups, technical meetups. But also museums, great restaurants, national parks and crowded cities

Connect with: Peers, leaders, teachers, innovators - not just people in your business niche.

Travel: As far & wide as you can. Nationally & internationally. Don't forget the local things around you that you've never seen

Exercise: You're taking care of your brain - take care of your body, too

Reading is hard. But great book world is always improving

> Bro

Just fwiw, calling people "bro" makes you sound immature and condescending. Maybe you didn't mean to sound condescending, but it starts us off on a bad foot.

> you can be obese and malnourished, they aren't mutually exclusive. Nutrition is more about the necessary nutrients that just total calories (although calorie deficient is also a case of malnutrition).

And I didn't say they were, but in order to stunt growth, you need to be significantly underfed. That is, for the most part, mutually exclusive with obesity.

> Again look at first world countries on the list I provided and see that there's a fairly significant difference between rural people from a country and the urban people from a country.

And again, read what I already replied:

> Certainly nutrition is a factor in height on a national level, and as a country moves from abject poverty to the point of starvation, to a point where they become better able to feed it's population, the height of it's citizens will increase.

In every instance where they cite measurements for both urban and rural residents, it is a country that has moved from being a third world to a second world country in the last ~30 years, or it is still a third world country. What that means is that rural residents will still be living with much lower standards of nutrition, as well as lower sanitation and healthcare compared to urban residents in the same country. These are all things that factor into general health, which all factor into height.

It is true that there is a huge wealth disparity between rural Americans and urban Americans, but the number of people in the US, rural or urban, who live in abject poverty is nearly zero, and it is even less in other first world countries. We may not have the strongest social safety net, but we still provide food stamps to the poor, and free school lunches & breakfasts to poor children. A few kids still fall through the net, but it is uncommon.

And of course almost no one in the US lives without things like running water. And while our healthcare system is terrible from a first-world perspective for the poor, it is sill far better than what a rural peasant in Brazil can expect.

> And if you can see how height gives people more money then I don't see why it wouldn't apply in the past either.

Of course they apply in the past.

> Those who inherit generational wealth are also likely to be taller than the median.

So let's step back to that Guardian article. According to it, "for every 2.5 inches in height resulting purely from a man’s genetics, his annual income increases by nearly £1600." The median income in the UK is 28,677GBP. The Average height according to Wikipedia is 5'9", so presumably someone who is 5'9" makes 28,677GBP, someone who is 5'11.5" makes 30,277GBP, and someone who is 6'2" makes 31,877GBP (all averages)...

Do you notice anything interesting about those incomes? None of them will be anything close to enough to raise an F1 driver!

Going just by height, the average F1 driver's parents would be something over 15' tall, since that is how tall you would need to be to average 100,000GBP per year, which is probably the minimum that most parents will be able to raise a future F1 driver on. Now obviously that isn't how it works, but I hope you can see how you need to use a little more finesse when considering this stuff. Keep in mind that the average NBA player (average height: 6'7") earns $7.7 million dollars, or about 242 times the median income in the US (average height: 5'9")... That alone will skew the stats.

So yes, being taller does mean you earn more on average, but it is not anything remotely close to the effect you are suggesting, and it tells us almost nothing about the height of the ultra-rich.

The mistake you made here is an easy one. You are absolutely correct in the basic correlation, but you failed to envision the scales involved, and why they don't really apply to outliers. I strongly recommend you pick up the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling. He goes over exactly how we make these errors, and how to detect and avoid them. It is such a great book that Bill Gates gave it away for free to every college graduate last year.