Hans Rosling, RIP

Rerun:

If you listen to the news and / or read your Facebook feed, it is easy to imagine that the world is going to heck in a handbasket. But it really is the best time ever to be alive (at least for a human).

Hans Rosling has shown this graphically (below; fuller version here). Steven Pinker has documented this as well. This new report – In 1990, more than 60% of people in East Asia were in extreme poverty. Now only 3.5% are. – documents just how much things have changed in only our lifetime!

Of course, this doesn't mean that everything is perfect; that is obviously not true. But we will be better off at changing the world if we are honest with ourselves and with others about the progress that has been made.