Some Countries Get it Less Wrong
As I launched into this educational journey, I have become increasingly aware of my tendency for Elementary reading, getting bogged down and stuck on trivial details, and losing sight of the overarching themes and direction of the books I am reading.[1] To combat this, I have tried to establish creative habits in preparation for reading a book. One developing habit I used this week was to ask ChatGPT, “What are the ramifications of reading Why We’re Wrong by Duffy?” (My question used to be more specific; however, after being reminded of the Anchoring Bias, I have tried to make it more neutral.)[2] This week, the response was intriguing, “The biggest ramification of Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything is its challenge to mainstream narratives, encouraging readers to adopt a more skeptical and critical approach to information…This skepticism can empower individuals to seek deeper truths but may also contribute to cynicism or polarization if misapplied…” [3]
Throughout Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything, Bobby Duffy pays due attention to country-specific gaps in beliefs regarding a wide swath of topics. Early in the Introduction, he develops a rhythm of communicating the results to specific questions with a bar graph. For example, one question asks, “Q. What proportion of the population of your country is aged sixty-five or over?” The bar graph depicts the answers for all 14 countries. In this instance, Italy is listed first with an assumed reality of 48% against an actual of 21%, creating a positive deviation of assumed versus reality of 27%. The remaining countries are listed in descending order, with the closest guess listed at the bottom.[4]
Upon arriving at page 180, the AI thought simmering in my mental crockpot started to boil. The idea of a “critical approach” kept coming back to mind, especially the idea of noticing what was missing.[5] The author could have named his book anything he wanted, using any arrangement of words. Yet he chose to use the word “Nearly”. It was a small personal epiphany: Some countries get things less wrong. Believing I was really onto something, I worked my way backward through the book, noting that “Sweden & Norway” were consistently at the bottom of the lists before again pressing on in the book. Unfortunately, twenty-nine pages later, I realized I had not discovered anything original; I had just not read far enough. Duffy clearly points out that Germany and Sweden had the lowest point spread and Norway gets things right more often than any other listed country.[6]
Succumbing to the commitment heuristic, I attempted to engage my System 2 thinking and press forward with understanding why two Nordic countries can consistently provide the most accurate answer to the questions presented in Duffy’s book.[7]
The World Happiness Report provides some interesting insights. “From 2013 until today, every time the World Happiness Report (WHR) has published its annual ranking of countries, the five Nordic countries – Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland – have all been in the top ten, with Nordic countries occupying the top three spots in 2017, 2018, and 2019.” [8] The extensive article identifies six contributing factors, of which time allows a brief exploration of only one point of connection between the WHR and Duffy’s work.
Institutional Quality
The WHR identifies that Nordic countries’ “quality of government” directly influences people’s happiness. This quality of government has produced high satisfaction among the respective countries’ residents and an elevated level of trust.
Oddly, Duffy points out no correlation between scores and government, except for the responses to the question, “I wish my country was run by a strong leader instead of the current government.”[9] Sweden was the country least supportive of this statement, assumably because it supports the current government and has a positive view of it.
According to the WHR, institutional trust correlates with general happiness and, according to Duffy, may also strongly correlate with the ability to assess reality more accurately. However, unless those of us living in the United States consider relocating, this connection provides no real solution to increased happiness or a heightened ability to assess reality accurately. As I contemplate this conundrum, I am left with two influencing thoughts. First is trust and power. Why do I trust (or don’t I trust) institutions, and do institutional systems function within the front and backstage concept?[10] Secondly, this brings me back to Poole’s idea of using mini-scenarios to train our brains.[11] Specifically, how can I retrain my emotionally driven System 1 to avoid treating partial news headlines and fragmented information as facts? Instead, how can I readily engage System 2 to examine the broader context before forming a well-rounded understanding of reality? It is my hope that these two areas of initial effort can help me avoid ChatGPT’s warning of allowing this book to increase any cynicism or polarization.
[1] Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, Revised edition (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1972). 24.
[2] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, First Edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).
[3] ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-4), conversation with author, March 16, 2025.
[4] Bobby Duffy, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding (New York: Basic Books, 2019). 4.
[5] Breaking Through: Threshold Concepts as a Key to Understanding | Robert Coven | TEDxCaryAcademy, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPYSKSFky4. 6:53.
[6] Duffy, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything. 209-218.
[7] Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. 21, 356.
[8] “The Nordic Exceptionalism: What Explains Why the Nordic Countries Are Constantly Among the Happiest in the World,” accessed March 18, 2025, https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/the-nordic-exceptionalism-what-explains-why-the-nordic-countries-are-constantly-among-the-happiest-in-the-world/.
[9] Duffy, Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything. 218
[10] Simon P. Walker, Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership (Piquant Publishing, 2007).
[11] Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).
About the Author
Darren Banek
4 responses to “Some Countries Get it Less Wrong”
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Darren –
Your prompt for Chat GPT sounds like a helpful tool, and one I’ll have to try!
You note the correlation between institutional trust and happiness–do you percieve that to be causal, and if so, in which direction? For those of us who serve as “institutional” leaders, what do you see as the low-hanging fruit for building institutional trust with our constituencies?
Jeremiah,
Great question! For the low-hanging fruit, I think it is spending time with them. Real-time…With no agenda, no restrictions, and no expectations. Just listening and seeing life through their eyes. As I am typing this, I would venture to say this creates an emotional connection and instills value. Which, in turn, fosters trust?
Your quest to find out why some countries get it more right was a worthy one. Your 29 pages may not have been in vain. How profound; Happiness is the answer! or at least “nearly” the answer. I do believe contentment plays a lot into how we perceive the world. The polarization of ideas can make it that we exaggerate and overestimate to prove our point. If we are content we can leave things as they are.
This was a great post!
While living in London, I made a monthly trip to Norway and learned to appreciate the people and culture. I would characterize the general populous as content rather than happy due to the even keel of emotions. There does seem to be a general trust in the government, perhaps because it uses its oil wealth to guarantee a high standard of living for all retirees regardless of profession. It is common for a store clerk to retire to a higher income stream than was received at the peak of employment. Contrast this governmental relationship to Qatar, another oil-rich country. Qatar had copied Norway’s sovereign wealth policy to take care of its residents, only to abandon it a few years later to copy Dubai’s strategy to build a destination, leading to a humanitarian black eye over immigrant treatment during construction of world cup facilities. Trust in government—like all relationships—takes a long time to build and can be quickly destroyed.
I agree with your summary. My bias is to expect our two party system to act like a bunch of toddlers in need of a nap. A scan of the headlines tends to confirm my bias. That is System 1 at its finest. Duffy is calling us to do better. Without chapter 11, the book would definitely leave me cynical. Even so, I do wonder if our polarized society will find an issue that many will want to slow down and ponder.