Norway 'more ignorant' than US: study

[The Straight Story]

Norwegians sniggering about would-be US ambassador George Tsunis' apparent lack of knowledge about Norway now have reason to pause.

According to the 2013 Ignorance Survey released last week fewer Norwegians got the answer right than American respondents on as many as eight of the ten questions asked.

In a typical example, when asked about the life expectancy of the world as a whole, only 14 percent of Norwegians ticked 70 -- the right answer -- compared to 53 percent of Americans.

When asked what proportion of one-year-olds in the world are vaccinated against measles, 17 percent of Americans ticked 80 percent, the right answer, compared to just 10 percent of Norwegians.

...

"Because chimpanzees get 33 percent right answers. The most probable reason is that Americans have fewer of those preconceived ideas, so they guess. I think the strength of the pre-conceived ideas is stronger in Scandinavia than in America."

...

According to the survey, there will be two billion children in 2100, a number only seven percent of Americans, six percent of Norwegians and eleven percent of Swedes got correct.

"The number of children has stopped increasing in the world," he said. "I call that the biggest event in human history that was completely missed by the media. And the reason is that it’s so slow."

http://www.thelocal.no/20140212/norwegians-more-ignorant-than-americans-study

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Its Time we Bomb Narvik

and free them from Nazi tyranny.

[pampango]

2. "People are never told about the progress. Decade after decade, they think it is as it was long ago.

It may come as some comfort to Norwegians that, according to Rosling, the comparatively better performance of American respondents doesn't mean they are better educated: quite the opposite in fact.

The problem for me was not ignorance," he told the audience in his famous TED talk. "It was preconceived ideas."

He said that people in Norway were not kept up to date by the media on changes in global trends, pointing to the deceleration in population growth over the last few decades as the most telling example. According to the survey, there will be two billion children in 2100, a number only seven percent of Americans, six percent of Norwegians and eleven percent of Swedes got correct.

"People are never told about the progress. Decade after decade, they think it is as it was long ago. The world view that emerges corresponds quite well to the world 30-40 years ago. They have a time lag of 30-40 years. Look at vaccination," he continued. "The number of children vaccinated, people think it’s between 20–25 percent who are vaccinated, but it’s 84 percent."

Wonderful article, The Straight Story. Thanks for finding and posting it. It is very interesting to see that people's perceptions of global reality is based on what existed 30-40 years ago. (It feels like this should be the fault of republicans who enjoy living in the past, but I can't figure out exactly why this is the case. )