New York Scepticism Is a Psychological Bias at Play in the News

One hundred thirty seven thousand people are pulled out of extreme poverty on a daily basis, as has happened every day for the last twenty five years. When we compare our present with the past, we have a skewed sample that makes the past seem more pleasant than it was for most people. Imagine if people from the future could only hear stories of to day that were written by the one per cent. We don't realize how much better things are to day because we don't realize how bad things were in the past....