Re:Gapminder: A non-profit fighting global misconceptions
by sdht0 on Thursday May 06, 2021 @09:56PM
(#27071074)
People's estimates are informed by what they pick up (even subconsciously) from (social) media, books, movies, etc. And then they support initiatives/NGOs/government actions based on those beliefs.
Gapminder is an attempt to show how outdated our view of the world are. The first time I had come across Rosling's TED talk (see my other comment), it did strike me how little I had actively looked into the state of the world and how the state is more optimistic than one can conclude from doomscrolling [0].
If you push someone to give you an answer to some question they don't know, that's different from someone that goes around thinking and acting as though they know the answer.
Only the latter seems like a real misconception to me.