Why we ignore progress

The single most important trend in human history is too often ignored.

The following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack in sequential order. For greater context you can start with the first excerpt from this book.

You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.

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Material progress is a fact. I am sorry if you do not believe it, but that is just how it is. By any of dozens of metrics, we are better off materially than we have ever been in our history. If you do not believe me, then look at the metrics of economic growth, human development, freedom, slavery, poverty, agricultural production, literacy, diet, famines, sanitation, drinking water, life expectancy, neonatal mortality, disease, education, access to electricity, housing, and violence (to name just a few), and in virtually every nation. And there are plenty more in my book.

Based on the evidence that I have presented here and in my book, one might expect everyone to be well aware of the progress that surrounds them and to have a positive outlook on the future. After all, every metric that I presented to document progress in is easily accessible on the internet.

Unfortunately, this is far from the case.

Ignorance of Progress

Hans Rosling wrote a gem of a book, entitled Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. I strongly encourage you to read it (or at least take a peak at the summary linked to above).

Rosling created a questionnaire consisting of 13 fact-based questions about the world. Rosling has handed out this questionnaire to college-educated people throughout the world on repeated occasions. There were no trick questions. Anyone with a basic knowledge of how the world is could have got most of the answers correct. But almost no one got the answers correct a majority of the time.

Typically, people choose the correct answer about 10-20% of the time. Almost no one got eight or more questions correct. The vast majority of people (80%) gave less correct answers than they would have achieved by randomly guessing!

And the better educated a person was, the fewer correct answers they got. The only question where the majority of the people got the answer correct is about climate change, a topic outside the scope of this book.

What is going on here? Perhaps Hans Rosling had too small a sample size, or he wrote biased questions. After all, he is not a professional pollster. Presumably, a professional polling organization would get better results, right?

Wrong!

In 2017, Ipsos teamed up with the Gates Foundation to take a survey across 28 different nations about people’s views on progress and expectations for the future. The primary purpose of the poll was related to development aid, but many of the questions are relevant to perceptions of progress.

Ipsos concludes: “Among the findings from our 28-country study are:

• Most citizens in donor countries believe that living conditions in the developing world are worsening when most data… shows marked progress…

• Furthermore, few people in donor countries expect the quality of economic opportunities, health, or education in the world’s poorest countries to improve over the next 15 years; …”

However, among respondents who are best informed about development progress, optimism increases.

What I found most striking about the results was how negative respondents from wealthy countries were about current and future levels of progress. By contrast, the respondents from middle- and lower-income nations were both more knowledgeable about current trends and more optimistic about the future.

When asked, “In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has…?, all of the respondents from the wealthy nation choose “Increased” by a wide margin. In the most knowledgeable of the wealthy countries, Sweden, 39% believed that extreme poverty “Increased” and 30% believed that it “Decreased”. All other respondents from wealthy countries chose Increased at least twice as much as Decreased. As we saw in Chapter One, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has declined quite dramatically over the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, respondents from lower-income nations, such as Kenya, Senegal, India, Indonesia and Nigeria all had majorities who believed extreme poverty had decreased, usually by wide margins. Middle-income nations were much more widely dispersed in their answers.

Answers for the question ”In the last 20 years, has the child mortality rate in developing countries increased, decreased or stayed about the same?” were more optimistic, but the same overall pattern emerges. Respondents from wealthy nations are less informed and substantially more negative than respondents from low-income nations.

Similar trends emerge in questions about developmental disabilities. Only on the question about trends in maternal mortality are wealthy nations solidly positive, although still less so than respondents from low-income nations.

When asked about future trends, the disparity between optimism from low-income nations and pessimism in wealthy nations intensifies. Interestingly, people are more positive about future trends in their community, less positive about future trends in their nations and least positive about future trends in the entire world. The further people get away from themselves, the more negative their answers. We will come back to these phenomena later.

When asked six different questions about trends over the next 15 years for the poorest countries, respondents from wealthy nations were overwhelmingly negative on all but one (gender equality). Again, respondents from low-income nations were overwhelmingly positive.

While it is very good news that respondents from low-income nations are keenly aware of the progress over the last few decades and optimistic that it will continue, the responses from wealthy nations are disturbing. Quite simply, people in wealthy nations are ignorant of world progress in most domains, and their negative attitudes towards current trends will make progress more difficult in the future.

There is strong reason to believe that a large proportion of citizens believe that something is fundamentally wrong with our society. Whereas for decades major political parties in wealthy nations tended to be either center-left or center-right, the political center is rapidly shrinking. Political parties on both the left and the right are moving from the center towards the extremes. They each preach that things are bad, and they are getting worse. Both find receptive audiences.

So why is this? Why are people in wealthy nations so ignorant of progress and so pessimistic about the future? Why doesn’t their prosperity make them more aware and more hopeful for the future?

I do not believe that there is only one answer to that question. Instead, I believe that there are a host of psychological, political and institutional reasons for this ignorance and pessimism.

It Is Not About the Facts

Could it be that people are just not aware of the facts?

Ignorance is part of the problem, but it is important to understand that it is intentional ignorance. Facts that back up the concept of progress are simply too easy to find.

We should start with the fact that almost no one starts out with an open mind and then decides to do a research project to figure out whether progress exists or not. (Just so we are clear, I did not arrive at the idea of progress before writing my book. I originally thought that this would be a history book, but then, after five years of research, I realized that “progress” was the only word for it).

At one time, it was hard to find good data about many of the positive trends that I documented in the first chapter. One had to purchase books at bookstores or go to the library. Not surprisingly, few people did so. Anyone with an intense interest in progress could get the facts, but those with just a passing interest had no easy way to get the facts.

With the internet and the rise of data-oriented websites and indexes, it is now very easy to get the facts. Perhaps the best means to do so today is to visit “Our World In Data” and browse their data for one hour. While that site bends over backward to present problems as well as long-term trends, it is hard to see how an objective person could come away from that site without a firm belief in progress.

Another hint of the problem is the way progress cynics act when confronted with the facts. In my experience, they do not update their thinking in any way. Maybe it is possible to create some doubt within the span of one conversation, but then when they interact with other progress cynics, they snap right back to their original thinking.

Unfortunately, for many people, the facts just do not matter. This chapter helps us to understand why.

Of course, this does not mean that supporters of progress should avoid fact-based arguments and quantitative data. Far from it. We should base our arguments on real data, and even more importantly, update our arguments as the facts change. But believers in progress must realize that we are battling against very powerful psychological forces, not ignorance of facts.

A Reminder Of What Progress Is Not About

I mentioned this briefly in the Introduction, but I want to emphasize what progress is not about to make my case clear.

The definition of progress that I use in this book series is “the sustained improvement in the material standard of living of a large group of people over a long period of time.” In particular, I focus on changes to living standards that are rapid enough and sustained enough that one person could notice positive changes within their lifetime.

Progress is not about:

• The United States and Western Europe (it is about the entire world)

• The future (it is about the present and the past)

• What happened today, this week, this month or this year (one needs to focus on decades and centuries)

• Every single nation, sub-national group and individual enjoying the benefits of progress (there are always exceptions)

• The environment (it is about humans)

• Inequality

• A lack of bad events

• A lack of problems

• Utopia

• Consumerism

• Happiness (although I have given strong evidence that progress does lead to greater happiness)

Progress cynics joyfully point out the exceptions to progress, while ignoring the overall trend. I have no problem pointing out the exceptions to the rule. These are problems that we need to solve.

But relentlessly focusing on the exceptions, while deliberately obfuscating on the overall trends is dishonest and socially destructive. Progress cynics want to establish an anti-progress narrative that is not disrupted by reality. That is unacceptable.

Sometimes progress cynics lower their guard and admit that they do not disagree with the facts, but claim that they are only concerned about how those facts will be used by their political enemies. Statements like this, which I have frequently heard, show that they know that the facts cannot sustain their political narrative.

Progress cynics claim that they are worried about the concept causing complacency about current problems. They conveniently ignore the fact that their cynical message is causing fear, despair and pessimism.

I understand that most people do not care much about progress or politics. Most people simply repeat what they hear other people who they trust say. Most people who are skeptical of progress are simply misinformed, and they can potentially change their minds.

My problem is with the public intellectuals and institutions who actively promote progress cynicism. They do not care about the facts and are actively trying to disrupt the communication of those facts because it conflicts with their personal, institutional or ideological self-interest.

Cynicism in progress has effectively become an identity badge with the Left becoming increasingly hostile to progress and the Right becoming increasingly skeptical of progress. To simplify somewhat, the Left sees the concept of progress as a threat to their narratives, which are designed to use the power of government to transform societies. The Right sees the concept of progress as eating away at the foundations of everything that they hold dear.

Both sides made up their minds before looking at the facts, refuse to update their beliefs and argue against facts because they see belief in progress as undermining their ideological agendas. Unfortunately, there is no pro-progress Center with a counter-narrative based upon reality and facts. I hope my books play some role in changing that.

Stay turned for more excerpts…

The above is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack in sequential order. For greater context you can start with the first excerpt from this book.

You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.