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I’m sorry, but, we’d be foolish to discard anything and everything that we can’t quantify due to complexity or a lack of understanding of what specifically to c

by toofy 5y ago

I’m sorry, but, we’d be foolish to discard anything and everything that we can’t quantify due to complexity or a lack of understanding of what specifically to consider. Does this mean we should move into decision making based on a kooks worship of a sun god? Absolutely not. But it’s incredibly uncharitable to imply that one of the most influential anthropologists of recent history is somehow unreasonable. We should absolutely rely on quantification where we are able, but members of this community of all people should be able to recognize that we’re still early in the iterations and in our abilities to measure all of life’s chaos and complexities accurately. Again, i’m very much so not advocating that the itch you just had in your nose means someone is talking about you and i’m definitely not advocating that the tingle you felt run up your spine was a ghost. But we would be absolutely crazy to believe that we can accurately measure most of the complexities that are humanity’s issues. I’m not a luddite. I firmly believe that technology and science are the best way to make decisions and carry us forward. But let’s not delude ourselves to the current limits of our abilities. Some of our smartest people understand humans the least–and we’d be fools to forget this basic fact.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> I’m sorry, but, we’d be foolish to discard anything and everything that we can’t quantify due to complexity or a lack of understanding of what specifically to consider. That's not the criticism here. The criticism is just getting a lot of stuff wrong including stuff he wouldn't have gotten wrong if he just did some basic fact checking. Just look at this mishmash of uninformed summaries, howlers, and bold claims that are disconnected from an awareness of how the systems he describes actually work: "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" "When Saddam Hussein made the bold move of singlehandedly switching from the dollar to the euro in 2000, followed by Iran in 2001, this was quickly followed by American bombing and military occupation. How much Hussein’s decision to buck the dollar really weighed into the U.S. decision to depose him is impossible to know, but no country in a position to make a similar switch can ignore the possibility. The result, among policymakers particularly in the global South, is widespread terror." c.f. https://savageminds.org/2013/02/09/delong-and-the-economists-on-debt-chapter-12/ https://savageminds.org/2013/02/09/delong-and-the-economists... You can find other examples here: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-the-absence-of-high-quality-delong-smackdowns-back-to-david-graeber.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-t... Now if Graeber had written a book on the joys of fishing, we wouldn't expect a large amount of numerical fact checks. But for a book on debt -- which is really a book on financial systems across history, we do expect that the conclusions be consistent with the data as we know it. Graeber never made those consistency checks, so much of his observations can be ruled out and they really reveal an incredible state of being out-of-touch. That said, he does provide rich examples and historical footnotes so I would recommend that people read his book. I just wouldn't recommend that people believe him when he draws certain conclusions and that people understand they are reading a polemical rather than an academic work.

by toofy 5y ago

rsj_hn 5y ago

> I’m sorry, but, we’d be foolish to discard anything and everything that we can’t quantify due to complexity or a lack of understanding of what specifically to consider. That's not the criticism here. The criticism is just getting a lot of stuff wrong including stuff he wouldn't have gotten wrong if he just did some basic fact checking. Just look at this mishmash of uninformed summaries, howlers, and bold claims that are disconnected from an awareness of how the systems he describes actually work: "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" "When Saddam Hussein made the bold move of singlehandedly switching from the dollar to the euro in 2000, followed by Iran in 2001, this was quickly followed by American bombing and military occupation. How much Hussein’s decision to buck the dollar really weighed into the U.S. decision to depose him is impossible to know, but no country in a position to make a similar switch can ignore the possibility. The result, among policymakers particularly in the global South, is widespread terror." c.f. https://savageminds.org/2013/02/09/delong-and-the-economists-on-debt-chapter-12/ https://savageminds.org/2013/02/09/delong-and-the-economists... You can find other examples here: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-the-absence-of-high-quality-delong-smackdowns-back-to-david-graeber.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-t... Now if Graeber had written a book on the joys of fishing, we wouldn't expect a large amount of numerical fact checks. But for a book on debt -- which is really a book on financial systems across history, we do expect that the conclusions be consistent with the data as we know it. Graeber never made those consistency checks, so much of his observations can be ruled out and they really reveal an incredible state of being out-of-touch. That said, he does provide rich examples and historical footnotes so I would recommend that people read his book. I just wouldn't recommend that people believe him when he draws certain conclusions and that people understand they are reading a polemical rather than an academic work.