Review of _Bullshit Jobs_ • Hacker News Board

Re: Review of _Bullshit Jobs_

#31

Post by jbdelong » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

jbdelong wrote: post #28

heydenberk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, but you've been suckered by a liar and a con man. I've honestly tried to just ignore the guy, hoping he'll eventually go away, but since he won't, I guess I have to explain what's really going on. After reading your response and digging into this a bit further, I retract my previous comment and no longer put any stock in Brad DeLong's intellectual honestly. I apologize for spreading it further.

Hey, Heydenberk— Why isn't this from Graeber completely dispositive on whether he is a loon or not? "Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages..." Genuinely curious: it seems to me (and to people I talk to) to dem…

Hey, Heydenberk—

I _am_ curious here. Can you enlighten me as to your thinking?

Re: Review of _Bullshit Jobs_

#32

Post by davidgraeber » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

jbdelong wrote: post #30

davidgraeber wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks much for saying. I mean it's understandable. It wouldn't normally occur to anyone that someone that reputable - professor at Berkeley, former Treasury official - would also be an internet troll. In fact he might be the only person I know of in a position that reputable who behaves the way he does. But he does.

"Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages..."

Yes, DeLong, we all know there was a garbled sentence in the first edition that was instantly removed the moment anyone noticed it. The only reason anyone has heard of it since is because you have reproduced it probably 457 times in a your endless attempts at defamation.

Look, I don't know you, DeLong, and I don't know or particularly care why you have decided to go on a five-year mission to use whatever dishonest means you can think of to destroy another scholar's intellectual reputation (a mission at which you seem to have failed pretty miserably, considering some of the honours I've noted above), but I'm starting to get tired of this. Your first effort at outright personal libel constituted an obvious potential legal case. The endless dishonesty about the book is less clear ground from a civil law perspective, but from the point of view of professional ethics, it's a very clear case of a violation, in fact, short of actual plagiarism, it's about the clearest case of a violation of professional ethics I can imagine. Universities have ethics codes, Berkeley does too, and using calculated dishonesty to try to defame another scholar, with clear and even admitted malicious intent - let alone, doing it perhaps a hundred times - isjust the kind of violation over which it is possible to make a formal complaint. Do you really want me to have you hauled up before your university's ethics board? Because I'm seriously considering it.

(Oh and there's no point in taking down the tweets and blogs containing the most obvious, demonstrable lies because I have screen-shots.)

Re: Review of _Bullshit Jobs_

#33

Post by davidgraeber » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 7:29 PM UTC

jbdelong wrote: post #31

jbdelong wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, Heydenberk— Why isn't this from Graeber completely dispositive on whether he is a loon or not? "Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages..." Genuinely curious: it seems to me (and to people I talk to) to dem…

Hey, Heydenberk— I _am_ curious here. Can you enlighten me as to your thinking?

There was a garbled sentence in the first edition that I didn't catch in proofreading but was instantly removed as soon as anyone noticed it. DeLong has seized on this and endlessly reproduced it, quite possible hundreds of times, pretending it's still in the text.

Why does he do this sort of thing? I honestly have no idea. I've never seen anyone else behave remotely like it.