[HN Gopher] David Graeber's Possible Worlds
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David Graeber's Possible Worlds
Author : Vigier
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-11-10 21:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nymag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nymag.com)
| bob229 wrote:
| Graeber was a talentless crackpot if you wasted your time reading
| his nonsense
| paulpauper wrote:
| He epitomized, embodied how and what public intellectuals should
| be, should aspire to: the a willingness to ask hard questions, to
| challenge conventional preconceived notions. It seems like
| academia these days is more about maintaining the status quo. If
| your ideas are engineering debate, it means you're doing your
| job.
| cossatot wrote:
| Graeber's posts on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidgraeber
| agumonkey wrote:
| How do people on HN deal with the potential disappearance of work
| altogether ?
|
| physical labour -> boston dynamics
|
| office labour -> ~cloud + smartphones (i'm in an office job right
| now, and it's near zero work, it's full on redundancy, ambiguous
| and contradictory information, political friction.. any computer
| could replace the entire building and operate faster 24/7)
|
| it's really not a huge stretch to predict 90% of tasks will just
| vanish
|
| and i'm saying this with a human life approach. How do we
| organize cities / nations around that. Do we plan for smooth
| transition, say 40 years of gradually smarter tooling so people
| stay in charge but with advanced assist ? do we go UBI ? do we
| convert every human as a space tourist ?
| ncmncm wrote:
| My pre-ordered copy of "The Dawn of Humanity", hot off the press,
| just arrived yesterday, from Bookshop.org, right on schedule. I
| am preparing to experience all my cherished preconceptions
| exploding.
| [deleted]
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I'm ashamed to admit I've never actually read any of Graeber's
| books, even though I'm fairly anarchist-leaning. I really need
| to change that. I didn't even know that he finished another one
| before he died, so I guess I'll have to add that to my list as
| well.
| bob229 wrote:
| Don't waste your time with his nonsense
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| He's got a lot of great talks and other appearances on
| YouTube. I don't read much but I listen to stuff like this on
| Bluetooth headphones while I clean the house and do other
| physical work. Often instead of reading an authors book I
| will listen to them give the same book talk at three
| different venues. I don't claim it's as good as reading the
| book but compared to buying the book and watching it collect
| dust on my shelf it's a winner.
| andrepd wrote:
| Aha, I see I'm not the only one who listens to talks while
| doing housework or working out. I've been on a Varoufakis
| binge for a while, perhaps I'll check Graber now ;)
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Graber vs Thiel discussion 2020: https://youtu.be/eF0cz9OmCGw
| hunterb123 wrote:
| This is one of my favorite Peter Thiel talks, the uploader
| certainly didn't seem to think so haha.
| marnett wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. Graeber's name came up many times during
| a recent a deep dive on ancient Mesoamerican societies. I had
| seen his new book The Dawn of Everything as well as an older
| text, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, and was eager to
| pick them up. I was unaware he had passed, however. Nearly all of
| his previous topics of research and publishing were of interest
| to me; it is a shame to realize this most recent book will be the
| last.
| culi wrote:
| What a way to go to. The book, cowritten with archeologist
| David Wengrow, ties together so many different developments
| within archeology and anthropology that are driving some major
| paradigm shifts. These massively important paradigm shifts have
| mostly been confined to academia so far and I don't there's
| been such a broad attempt to tie them altogether like this.
| Especially not one geared towards the public
|
| This book will undoubtedly change the way we talk about non-
| industrial peoples and lifestyles for decades to come.
|
| Rest in power, David Graeber
| skybrian wrote:
| It's a well-written biography and Graeber comes across as a great
| guy but on the other hand the Brad DeLong takedown linked in the
| article [1] is quite something.
|
| I'm wondering how he wrote a 500 page book on debt without really
| understanding banking?
|
| [1] https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/01/the-very-last-
| david-g...
| cynicalkane wrote:
| I want to add to the above comment. Graeber's lack of integrity
| and disregard for facts should cast a shadow of mistrust over
| his other work, not to mention his explosive reaction on being
| called out for it.
|
| If you can't trust someone's writings on facts you know about,
| why trust them on facts you don't know about? One of the
| essential things to understand when taking in information is to
| first understand: _is this information trustworthy?_
|
| I see the above as clear evidence Graeber is not only
| untrustworthy but explicitly seems to feel he has the right to
| be so. And now I see so many people on a site for hackers and
| technology celebrating someone's ideas without first wondering
| _if those ideas are even factually correct_ and it puzzles me
| how we ended up here. Discussion about the factual correctness
| of Graeber 's ideas, or the trustworthiness of his perspective
| and person, seems to be actively discouraged.
| steppi wrote:
| David Graeber had an account here and defended himself from
| DeLong's accusations in a comment [1]. They even had an
| exchange in that thread. At best I think DeLong has been pretty
| uncharitable to Graeber.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163449
| specialist wrote:
| Once I read Debt, I decided DeLong criticized a book which
| Graeber had not written. Like @heydenberk, I unfollowed
| DeLong.
| dools wrote:
| Wow I knew Graeber was wrong about a lot but I didn't know he
| claimed the Fed isn't part of the government in that book!
| That's unforgivable
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| This is a bit of a complicated question around the Federal
| Reserve. For all practical purposes it is, but technically it
| may not be under some view points.
|
| https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-
| fed...
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| https://archive.md/dTHGn
| diego_moita wrote:
| Began "The Dawn of Everything" about a week ago, still on chapter
| 3.
|
| Chapter 2 was very, very good. Worth the whole book alone. It
| begins with by questioning "why did Rousseau wrote about
| inequality if 100 years before no one in western culture cared
| about it"? Then he goes to show how the themes of liberty and
| social equality came from Canadian First Nations criticism of
| western culture. It is very well argued, solid and mind-blowing.
|
| Sometimes the book gets too much into petty fights. I didn't like
| its takes on Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" or Jared Diamond's "Guns,
| Germs and Steel". But that's a matter of my personal taste.
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