Follow the trend lines, not the headlines

By almost every measure, life is better than ever. So why does it feel like things are falling apart?

It doesn’t look good out there. We still have war in Ukraine, an unpredictable US president causing chaos, and now AI threatening our jobs.

The internet, newspapers, and TV are full of bad news that are fueling our fears and dooms. Even here in Switzerland, one of the world’s most privileged and stable countries, many of my friends are deeply pessimistic about the future.

But if we zoom out, we’re realizing that we’re living in the best time in human history. You just can’t tell from the headlines.

Negativity is in human nature

Negativity bias is a well-understood cognitive bias we’re all suffering from. Negative events affect us more than equally positive ones. This is an evolutionary trait that kept our ancestors alive because negative news means danger and directly translates to survival. I’m personally seeing this in my startup, where positive user feedback feels like noise and customer complaints are strong signal.

Another reason why we feel everything is getting worse these days is Nostalgia bias / Rosy retrospection that makes us selectively remember the past as better than it was. Military service is mandatory in Switzerland, and I can ask anyone about it now and they’ll tell me about the lifelong friendships they made. When I asked them while they were doing it, I got endless complaining.

Lastly, positive progress (e.g. declining poverty) is gradual and invisible, while bad news (e.g. a plane crash) happens suddenly.

These biases become very visible on (social) media platforms, where negative posts and headlines drive most of the engagements and clicks.

Let’s take a look at some charts and data. Sources likes https://ourworldindata.org or https://humanprogress.org track human progress with data and research.

Global poverty

200 years ago, an estimated 80% of the world’s population was living in extreme poverty, today we’re at 10%. Industrialization lifted a lot of people out of poverty, and I am wondering if AI can potentially have a similar effect. Economic growth is not a zero-sum game, it’s a positive-sum game. Increased productivity historically made vital goods and services like food, clothing, and housing less scarce.

Health

In 1800, the health conditions were such that around 43% of the world’s newborns died before their fifth birthday. In 2021, child mortality was down to 4%. Improvements in science, medicine, sanitation, and vaccination improved global health drastically. AI is massively accelerating drug and vaccine discovery and will increase this trend.



In 1900, the average life expectancy of a newborn was 32 years. By 2021 this had more than doubled to 71 years.

Education

Formal education went from being a luxury in the 1800s, to be seen as a fundamental right every government should provide. Less than 20% of adults have not received any formal education. I’m optimistic that AI can further democratize education across the world.

This doesn’t mean problems aren’t real, but next time the headlines feel overwhelming, zoom out.

Follow the trend lines, not the headlines. - Bill Clinton