Why subscribe?

My background is in physics and Information Technology. I don’t claim to be an expert on anything but I have the luxury of time to explore things that many people don’t and so hope to provide new insights which may be useful.

I aim to cover a wide variety of topics with an emphasis on understanding what data tells us about the world today. By looking at long term historical trends I will show that there is often a much more positive outlook for the world than you might believe from the relentless diet of doom and gloom clickbait journalism produced by the mainstream media. Inevitably some of the conclusions may make uncomfortable reading since the gap between the media narrative and reality can be surprisingly large.

As an example, up until about 20 years ago I followed the media line on climate change without question and like many found the outlook for humanity to be depressing. Then a number of things happened which forced me to reassess my views. This started with a discussion with a friend over a pint in the pub. I had just read another doom laden article in the Independent (since deleted) which quoted Dr David Viner (Senior scientist, University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit):

… within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event … children just aren’t going to know what snow is”

We were thinking about going skiing in the New Year and I ventured that we needed to get in as many trips as we could because soon we wouldn’t be able to. My friend disagreed, claiming there was a lot of data that demonstrated this forecast was nonsense so we agreed to a small wager.

I didn’t think it would take long to put a small paper together summarising the main data supporting the various aspects of the coming apocalypse. You can guess the rest.

By following the various headlines and digging into the references behind the headlines it became clear that my friend was correct. It's difficult to exaggerate the overwhelming feeling of cognitive dissonance that ensued, particularly as someone who has developed complex computer models of geophysical processes. Just writing these words down now makes me wince in embarrassment. However, it showed me that even those who ought to know better are not immune to the group-think that pervades the mainstream media and our cultural life.

The second thing was discovering Hans Rosling on YouTube and much later reading his book Factfulness. Dr Rosling showed (he has sadly passed away now) that by every meaningful measure of human progress, life has improved across the globe. His entertaining presentational style and use of novel data visualisation techniques ought to convince even the most pessimistic sceptic that actually, the world really isn't going to hell in a hand-cart.

The third was reading Matt Ridley’s book the Rational Optimist. To quote from Steven Pinker's comment:

For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.

More recently I have discovered two amazing websites that provide copious data to support the thesis that things are getting better: HumanProgress.org and Our World In Data. The former aims to highlight the gap between reality of human experience and public perception:

To rectify the widely held misperceptions about the state of humanity, we have gathered empirical data from reliable sources that look at worldwide long-term trends. By putting together these comprehensive data in an accessible way, our goal is to provide a useful resource for students, scholars, journalists, policymakers, and the general public.

The latter does not make light of the problems we face but believes that a key reason why we fail to achieve the progress we are capable of is that we do not make enough use of existing research and data:

the important knowledge is often stored in inaccessible databases, locked away behind paywalls and buried under jargon in academic papers.

…
The goal of our work is to make the knowledge on the big problems accessible and understandable.

I cannot recommend these websites enough and will use their data extensively in this blog.

The final driver for this blog has been the increasing attack on free speech by a vocal but small section of society, supported in their endeavours by much of the media who seem to have lost all objectivity. Investigative journalism now takes a very distant backseat to propaganda for progressive causes. It was only when I came to appreciate the lies being spouted about climate change that I came to realise that the rot has spread much further. The coverage of Brexit and the COVID pandemic are just two examples but there are many others. It is no surprise therefore that people are turning away from the mainstream media in droves and looking for alternative media sources.

I hope you will find this substack a useful antidote to the mainstream narrative and find some comfort and relief from the mental stress that it causes. Unfortunately, if you are like me you may find that you end up replacing one source of stress with another when you realise how much we are being lied to. If you do please considering sharing this substack with family and friends to expand the conversation and push back against this pessimistic world view.

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