{"id":41279,"date":"2025-03-20T10:38:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T17:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41279"},"modified":"2025-03-20T10:38:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T17:38:17","slug":"some-countries-get-it-less-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/some-countries-get-it-less-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Countries Get it Less Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

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]<\/a> 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, \u201cWhat are the ramifications of reading Why We\u2019re Wrong by Duffy?\u201d (My question used to be more specific; however, after being reminded of the Anchoring Bias, I have tried to make it more neutral.)[2]<\/a> This week, the response was intriguing, \u201cThe biggest ramification of\u00a0Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything<\/u>\u00a0is its challenge to mainstream narratives, encouraging readers to adopt a more skeptical and critical approach to information\u2026This skepticism can empower individuals to seek deeper truths but may also contribute to cynicism or polarization if misapplied\u2026\u201d [3]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Throughout Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything,<\/em> 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, \u201cQ. What proportion of the population of your country is aged sixty-five or over?\u201d <\/em>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]<\/a><\/p>\n

Upon arriving at page 180, the AI thought simmering in my mental crockpot started to boil. The idea of a \u201ccritical approach\u201d kept coming back to mind, especially the idea of noticing what was missing.[5]<\/a> The author could have named his book anything he wanted, using any arrangement of words. Yet he chose to use the word \u201cNearly\u201d. It was a small personal epiphany: Some countries get things less wrong. <\/strong>Believing I was really onto something, I worked my way backward through the book, noting that \u201cSweden & Norway\u201d 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]<\/a><\/p>\n

Succumbing to the commitment heuristic, I attempted to engage my System 2 thinking and press forward with understanding why<\/em> two Nordic countries can consistently provide the most accurate answer to the questions presented in Duffy\u2019s book.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

The World Happiness Report provides some interesting insights. \u201cFrom 2013 until today, every time the World Happiness Report (WHR) has published its annual ranking of countries, the five Nordic countries \u2013 Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden<\/strong>, and Iceland \u2013 have all been in the top ten, with Nordic countries occupying the top three spots in 2017, 2018, and 2019.\u201d [8]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> 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\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Institutional Quality<\/strong><\/p>\n

The WHR identifies that Nordic countries’ \u201cquality of government\u201d directly influences people’s happiness. This quality of government has produced high satisfaction among the respective countries’ residents and an elevated level of trust.<\/p>\n

Oddly, Duffy points out no correlation between scores and government, except for the responses to the question, \u201cI wish my country was run by a strong leader instead of the current government<\/em>.\u201d[9]<\/a> Sweden was the country least supportive of this statement, assumably because it supports the current government and has a positive view of it.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t I trust) institutions, and do institutional systems function within the front and backstage concept?[10]<\/a> Secondly, this brings me back to Poole\u2019s idea of using mini-scenarios to train our brains.[11]<\/a> 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\u2019s warning of allowing this book to increase any cynicism or polarization.<\/em><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading<\/em>, Revised edition (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1972). 24.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>, First Edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-4), conversation with author, March 16, 2025.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Bobby Duffy, Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding<\/em> (New York: Basic Books, 2019). 4.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Breaking Through: Threshold Concepts as a Key to Understanding | Robert Coven | TEDxCaryAcademy<\/em>, 2018, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GCPYSKSFky4. 6:53.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Duffy, Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything<\/em>. 209-218.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>. 21, 356.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> \u201cThe Nordic Exceptionalism: What Explains Why the Nordic Countries Are Constantly Among the Happiest in the World,\u201d 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\/.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Duffy, Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything<\/em>. 218<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Simon P. Walker, Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em> (Piquant Publishing, 2007).<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership<\/em> (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2640,3397],"class_list":["post-41279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-duffy","tag-dlgp04","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41280,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41279\/revisions\/41280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}