July 2019 – Fact talk

"The authors found that this is caused not only by very outdated information about the state of the world but also by a lack of critical thinking – called negative instincts in the language of this book. Faktomluva guides us through these 10 instincts with ease, plenty of charts, great stories, and practical advice on how to gradually build habits of critical thinking and base your opinions and communication on insight and facts," says Petr Vítek, a member of the Red Button network.

When people are asked simple questions about the state of the world, such as whether extreme poverty is decreasing, what the average life expectancy on Earth is, or how violent our world is, we consistently get wrong answers. So wrong that if chimpanzees answered completely at random, they would perform better than teachers, investment bankers, and Nobel laureates. Doctor, statistician, and entertaining popularizer Hans Rosling offers a radically new explanation for this phenomenon. He reveals ten instincts of unconscious but predictable cognitive biases that influence our views of the world around us. These include, for example, the gap instinct (the tendency to divide the world into fundamentally different camps), negativity (noticing bad things more than good ones), but also urgency (the feeling of now or never leading to hasty decisions) and blame (looking for culprits rather than causes). When we focus on facts, we find that the world as a whole is doing much better than we think. And that it is improving rapidly. This does not mean that serious problems and risks do not exist. However, if we do not know our misleading instincts, we cannot look at problems based on facts or focus on what threatens us the most. Inspiring

Faktomluva, full of exciting and touching stories, is a crucial book that will change the way you evaluate the world and equip you with the ability to respond correctly to future challenges.

Who is Petr Vítek?

Petr Vítek gained 9 years of consulting experience at Deloitte in strategy, performance improvement, and Human Capital. He worked as a CFO. He is responsible for managing the Impact Hub network in the Czech Republic, focusing on developing acceleration and innovation programs that support over 100 business or impact projects/startups. He serves on the boards of nonprofits (e.g., Amnesty International) and foundations (Vodafone Foundation, Česká spořitelna Foundation). He co-founded the first Czech impact investment fund, Tilia Impact Ventures. He dreams of going to space and becoming one of its three children or a woman for an hour.