We have just had the best decade in human history to date ...

On most objective measures, the decade which has just ended was the best in human history.

But we don't want to believe it.

Our brains evolved to focus on protecting us against threats which makes us prone to a bias in favour or pessimism.

Matt Ridley tweeted ironically yesterday that

"If you asked chimpanzees whether extreme poverty has doubled, halved, or stayed the same by writing the answers on three bananas, they would get the right answer six times as often as people do:"

More on this subject on the "Rational Optimist" podcast here.

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