Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

nymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 194 posts

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#111

Post by unmole »

quadrangle wrote: post #101
unmole wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no factual mistakes in “Debt” that impact the solidity of Graeber’s conclusions or historical narratives, most inaccuracies were minor and corrected in subsequent editions without changing the character of the book or the arguments within. It's been a while since I read Debt but I distinctly remember Graber's disingenuous take on Adam Smith's famous "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brew…

I don't think your summary of why Debt was/is popular will hold up to scrutiny. If you investigate with an open mind why people appreciate the book, it won't be merely because it plays up anti-state and anti-biz, anti-bank tropes. There's tons of other books that do that which people do not find comparable insightful. The emphasis of the myth of barter and the rest of the stuff about how debt works is interesting esp…

Actually I don't completely disagree with your comment.

"The book asks big questions" would be a better discription than what I originally wrote. The book makes for excellent dinner table conversation.

But I stand by my assertion that it does not provide any new perspectives on economics that bear any resemblance to the real world. And if anything, it makes it difficult for the reader to understand the financial system because of its factual inaccuracies.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#112

Post by vishnugupta »

culi wrote: post #76
Robotbeat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you summarize three of these paradigm shifts?

Lol this sounds like a class assignment. E.g. the origins of agriculture. It's going from the idea of having a single point of origin to multiple (~15-20) points of origins around the world. Another major shift in thinking about agriculture is realizing it wasn't so much of a technological advancement (indeed agricultural people had radically reduced lifespans, less leisure time, more disease, etc) as something peopl…

> more in the book was the relationships between cultures and ecologies.

Though he does touch on this topic in the chapter about the origins of private property.

Specifically that foragers did in fact took active care of, and shaped, their ecology not unlike farmers. It’s just that they didn’t have a burning need to permanently stick with the domestication of plants and animals as the food was abundantly available to them.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#114

Post by thundergolfer »

f0e4c2f7 wrote: post #100
thundergolfer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debt is incredible, and I don't use that work lightly. For me I came away not with answers, but feeling like I could for the first time actually think about its big issues (money, economics, morality, community).

I enjoy Graeber's work including Debt: a 5000 year history, but I know that feeling you mean of the book leaving you with more questions than answers. If you haven't read it you might enjoy Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty as an interesting follow up to it.

I've got a copy of that one, but I find it's a more intimidating and taxing read than Debt. I do mean to get through it though.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#115

Post by vishnugupta »

Robotbeat wrote: post #45

Interesting. Makes me want to actually read Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens. I watched the GG&S documentary & enjoyed it, but I should read the book. What single book of Graeber should I read that has his most important ideas? Is it this one?

+1 to the Debt book.

It changed my fundamental thought process and I consider the book to be more of a framework.

For example; I now realize how natural it was for my mother to constantly exchange groceries and food with our neighbors and how formally keeping track of them was considered to be a bad thing. Or how we deliberate and take time while gifting someone we know (e.g on their marriage), we gift them in kind. Where as it’s totally OK to gift money in envelopes in Indian marriages if you don’t know the bride/groom that well but got invited to the marriage anyway through some distant relatives. Money here kind of takes away the personal touch, like you have to fulfill a gifting obligation but don’t care much about it because you don’t know the marrying couple.

I could go on for a while because I re-read different parts of the book once every month :-)

It’s difficult to put into words how good it is in terms of the wide range of space-time it covers and the depth of the discourse. It’s like climbing a mountain several times from different paths, some of which are deliberately dead end just to present an alternative view point and why it’s not good enough.

The bibliography could be made into a book of its own.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#116

Post by quadrangle »

unmole wrote: post #111
quadrangle wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your summary of why Debt was/is popular will hold up to scrutiny. If you investigate with an open mind why people appreciate the book, it won't be merely because it plays up anti-state and anti-biz, anti-bank tropes. There's tons of other books that do that which people do not find comparable insightful. The emphasis of the myth of barter and the rest of the stuff about how debt works is interesting esp…

Actually I don't completely disagree with your comment. "The book asks big questions" would be a better discription than what I originally wrote. The book makes for excellent dinner table conversation. But I stand by my assertion that it does not provide any new perspectives on economics that bear any resemblance to the real world. And if anything, it makes it difficult for the reader to understand the financial syst…

Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case.

The core of the book in my reading is not a description of the dominant financial system. I read it as a discussion of multiple factors that influence how debt can be used in a wide variety of ways in societies. And the parts that discussed our current financial arrangements might not be precise in all regards, but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#117

Post by quadrangle »

petermcneeley wrote: post #8

Graber vs Thiel discussion 2020: https://youtu.be/eF0cz9OmCGw

Thanks, that was interesting. They actually largely agreed in that exchange, not really "vs". That was possible because of not being people who just do or say the caricature of some particular political dogma. If there's any chance to progress our discourse as a society, we have to overcome the pattern where if I say "Graeber and Thiel were in agreement", people stop imagining that it means they both are effectively the caricature of whatever Thiel-critics make him out to be.

I would love to have this sort of dialogue be the norm. I would love to have this sort of reasoned intellectual rapport with others, including those who I might have significant disagreements with.

P.S. Oops, I looked at the YouTube comments. We're F'ed. People don't know how to engage with ideas and respectful discourse anymore.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#118

Post by tlb »

sien wrote: post #58
cynicalkane wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

The thesis of 'Bullshit Jobs' was also dubious at best. https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullsh... "In his book, Mr Graeber relied heavily on surveys of British and Dutch workers that asked participants whether their job made a meaningful contribution to the world. This seems a high bar to clear; it is unsurprising that 37-40% of respondents thought their job didn’t qualify. By contrast, the acad…

The book's thesis doesn't depend on the exact number of bullshit jobs. Any of the percentages correspond to millions of people spending their days doing work they consider useless. That must have an impact on society -- surely that's worth digging in to? The majority of the book digs into particular kinds of bullshit jobs and what it's like to do them, which I found fascinating.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#119

Post by NoThisIsMe »

jhbadger wrote: post #26
diego_moita wrote: post #17

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, soli…

There were plenty of Westerners who were concerned with inequality -- there were numerous failed peasant rebellions throughout Europe ever since the Middle Ages.

I haven't read the book but I assume here Rousseau is serving as an emblem for the Enlightenment (or an aspect of it at least), which is generally regarded as uhh kind of a big deal. That there were earlier Europeans here and there who discussed some of the same concepts is of little significance.

Re: David Graeber’s Possible Worlds

#120

Post by pxc »

orthecreedence wrote: post #4
ncmncm wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Some of them were popular enough to get audiobook versions, which can help you get started if sitting down to read big tomes is something you find difficult
Post reply on HN