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David Graeber also wrote (in the same book): >Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM

David Graeber also wrote (in the same book): >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. That's an impressive amount of wrong to pack into one sentence! So much wrong, that I would not trust anything based on Graeber's word.

eplanit 5y ago
Surely there are photos of the early Apple engineers in the 1970s, with their _laptops_ in each other's garages. /s
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
magnio 5y ago
How about Wikipedia?[0] > After the Haitians gained independence from French colonial rule in the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the French returned in 1825 and demanded that the newly independent country pay the French government and French slaveholders the modern equivalent of US$21 billion for the theft of the slaveowner's property and the land that they had turned into profitable sugar and coffee-producing plantations. > Haiti’s legacy of debt began shortly after a widespread slave revolt against the French, with Haitians gaining their independence from France in 1804. President of the United States Thomas Jefferson – fearing that slaves gaining their independence would spread to the United States – stopped sending aid that began under his predecessor John Adams and pursued international isolation of Haiti during his tenure. France had also pursued a policy that prevented Haiti from participating in trade in the Atlantic. This isolation on the international stage made Haiti desperate for economic relief. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti
Spooky23 5y ago
Are you trying to say that Apple Engineers in 1978 weren’t using their MacBooks? I wonder why the democratic drum circles were in garages instead of Starbucks? LOL. That’s beyond impressive, that in extraordinarily and spectacularly ignorant prose.
zja 5y ago
Graeber actually addressed this sentence on this site a few years ago (It was a "garbled sentence in the first edition that was instantly removed"). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17193121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17193121
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  How'd that sentence make it into the first edition? And who wrote it?
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    David Graeber wrote it, and the first question is answered in the comment you're replying to? Are you making a larger point?
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      > Are you making a larger point? Not OP, but I think the idea is one should be skeptical of other things the guy has to say, considering that the aforementioned sentence about Apple isn't just wrong, it's wrong in a way that shows no familiarity with the subject. at all. Or, more bluntly, the guy sounds like he's full of shit.
      - dang 5y ago
        If everyone is to be judged by the worst sentence they've written then literally everyone ends up in the junk pile. This is not a substantive argument, and it's completely off topic. Please don't take HN threads further down lame generic tangents. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        cabalamat 5y ago
        >If everyone is to be judged by the worst sentence they've written then literally everyone ends up in the junk pile. I disagree. I have no doubt written things that are wrong, including things that are very wrong. But I very much doubt that I have ever packed that amount of wrongness into one sentence.
handrous 5y ago
Has any other author ever been so consistently dismissed over one errata-worthy, not-particularly-crucial, sentence in a first edition of one book? Why is that brought up as some kind of "gotcha" every time he comes up? You could dismiss most any author with any significant amount of published material over similar trivia.
- dogman144 5y ago
  Author gets dismissed because the follow on editions are still a detail-packed journey through ancient anthropology that all cleanly lands as “see, debt is slavery and always has been.” I don’t know how someone can take such a un-nuanced view of credit markets seriously.
  - handrous 5y ago
    I read it, and recall there being a bit more to it than that. For one thing—of many—the book treats extensively of debt as a kind of social glue, fundamental to human relationships & societies, which isn't compatible with: "see, debt is slavery and always has been." One consistent problem I've had trying to take in criticism of the book (and I have looked for it!) is that it rarely seems to have been written by people who read the same book I did. It's bizarre.
    - dogman144 5y ago
      I think what frustrates people is two things. First, the lengthy slog through ancient African societies which then suddenly ~lands at very on-the-nose messaging and what feels like the “real point” or basically a total revamp of the book’s themes up to that point. But this occurs when you’re already pretty deep into the book. Second, If I had to guess, and I don’t say this with snark, the Book’s timing is another factor. There’s this sense that a bait and switch occurred where an interesting, nuanced book in the post ‘08 era is started in good faith, and an Occupy WS diatribe suddenly shows up halfway through. Fair - the author was very involved in Occupy, so sure buyer beware. But it was published at a time when many of the book’s readers, and the US at large, had had it with Occupy and it’s themes. But, readers still tried to make an effort to absorb ideas from that side of the house, as ‘11-12 was no economic Cakewalk. Regardless, that honest effort lands squarely back in Occupy territory, but it took 200 pages to get there.
dogman144 5y ago
The book is awful. I said it in another response, but it’s basically a narrative looking for evidence with a mix of anthropology.
andrepd 5y ago
... So let me get this straight: you disregard something because the person who wrote it had a since-corrected editor error in the first edition of an unrelated work. Is that it?
- handrous 5y ago
  I'm open to the idea (though have yet to see what I'd consider strong evidence for it) that Graeber was, generally, full of shit—his public presentation and the kind of books he wrote incline me to believe it, in fact, even if the books themselves have, so far, surprised me by having a lot more substance than I expected—but the way people harp on that sentence makes me think they're not familiar with the way broad-reaching books like this are researched, written, and edited. Getting a handful of details wrong, even very wrong, is downright normal. Failing to acknowledge and fix them when they're pointed out might be a problem, but... did that happen, with that book? Not just there, but anywhere else? I'd be much more interested in criticism that addresses the core ideas, evidence, and arguments of the book, or that illustrate a pattern of presenting incorrect information, especially if it's left that way once it's made known, or if it's something the arguments presented by the book hinge on. Bringing this one bit up over and over and over doesn't really prove anything, and isn't helpful.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads on offtopic flamewar tangents. What a useless train wreck. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

eplanit 5y ago

Surely there are photos of the early Apple engineers in the 1970s, with their _laptops_ in each other's garages. /s

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

magnio 5y ago

How about Wikipedia?[0] > After the Haitians gained independence from French colonial rule in the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the French returned in 1825 and demanded that the newly independent country pay the French government and French slaveholders the modern equivalent of US$21 billion for the theft of the slaveowner's property and the land that they had turned into profitable sugar and coffee-producing plantations. > Haiti’s legacy of debt began shortly after a widespread slave revolt against the French, with Haitians gaining their independence from France in 1804. President of the United States Thomas Jefferson – fearing that slaves gaining their independence would spread to the United States – stopped sending aid that began under his predecessor John Adams and pursued international isolation of Haiti during his tenure. France had also pursued a policy that prevented Haiti from participating in trade in the Atlantic. This isolation on the international stage made Haiti desperate for economic relief. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti

Spooky23 5y ago

Are you trying to say that Apple Engineers in 1978 weren’t using their MacBooks? I wonder why the democratic drum circles were in garages instead of Starbucks? LOL. That’s beyond impressive, that in extraordinarily and spectacularly ignorant prose.

zja 5y ago

Graeber actually addressed this sentence on this site a few years ago (It was a "garbled sentence in the first edition that was instantly removed"). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17193121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17193121

rjzzleep 5y ago
How'd that sentence make it into the first edition? And who wrote it?
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  David Graeber wrote it, and the first question is answered in the comment you're replying to? Are you making a larger point?
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    > Are you making a larger point? Not OP, but I think the idea is one should be skeptical of other things the guy has to say, considering that the aforementioned sentence about Apple isn't just wrong, it's wrong in a way that shows no familiarity with the subject. at all. Or, more bluntly, the guy sounds like he's full of shit.
    - dang 5y ago
      If everyone is to be judged by the worst sentence they've written then literally everyone ends up in the junk pile. This is not a substantive argument, and it's completely off topic. Please don't take HN threads further down lame generic tangents. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - cabalamat 5y ago
        >If everyone is to be judged by the worst sentence they've written then literally everyone ends up in the junk pile. I disagree. I have no doubt written things that are wrong, including things that are very wrong. But I very much doubt that I have ever packed that amount of wrongness into one sentence.

handrous 5y ago

Has any other author ever been so consistently dismissed over one errata-worthy, not-particularly-crucial, sentence in a first edition of one book? Why is that brought up as some kind of "gotcha" every time he comes up? You could dismiss most any author with any significant amount of published material over similar trivia.

dogman144 5y ago
Author gets dismissed because the follow on editions are still a detail-packed journey through ancient anthropology that all cleanly lands as “see, debt is slavery and always has been.” I don’t know how someone can take such a un-nuanced view of credit markets seriously.
- handrous 5y ago
  I read it, and recall there being a bit more to it than that. For one thing—of many—the book treats extensively of debt as a kind of social glue, fundamental to human relationships & societies, which isn't compatible with: "see, debt is slavery and always has been." One consistent problem I've had trying to take in criticism of the book (and I have looked for it!) is that it rarely seems to have been written by people who read the same book I did. It's bizarre.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    I think what frustrates people is two things. First, the lengthy slog through ancient African societies which then suddenly ~lands at very on-the-nose messaging and what feels like the “real point” or basically a total revamp of the book’s themes up to that point. But this occurs when you’re already pretty deep into the book. Second, If I had to guess, and I don’t say this with snark, the Book’s timing is another factor. There’s this sense that a bait and switch occurred where an interesting, nuanced book in the post ‘08 era is started in good faith, and an Occupy WS diatribe suddenly shows up halfway through. Fair - the author was very involved in Occupy, so sure buyer beware. But it was published at a time when many of the book’s readers, and the US at large, had had it with Occupy and it’s themes. But, readers still tried to make an effort to absorb ideas from that side of the house, as ‘11-12 was no economic Cakewalk. Regardless, that honest effort lands squarely back in Occupy territory, but it took 200 pages to get there.

dogman144 5y ago

The book is awful. I said it in another response, but it’s basically a narrative looking for evidence with a mix of anthropology.

andrepd 5y ago

... So let me get this straight: you disregard something because the person who wrote it had a since-corrected editor error in the first edition of an unrelated work. Is that it?

handrous 5y ago
I'm open to the idea (though have yet to see what I'd consider strong evidence for it) that Graeber was, generally, full of shit—his public presentation and the kind of books he wrote incline me to believe it, in fact, even if the books themselves have, so far, surprised me by having a lot more substance than I expected—but the way people harp on that sentence makes me think they're not familiar with the way broad-reaching books like this are researched, written, and edited. Getting a handful of details wrong, even very wrong, is downright normal. Failing to acknowledge and fix them when they're pointed out might be a problem, but... did that happen, with that book? Not just there, but anywhere else? I'd be much more interested in criticism that addresses the core ideas, evidence, and arguments of the book, or that illustrate a pattern of presenting incorrect information, especially if it's left that way once it's made known, or if it's something the arguments presented by the book hinge on. Bringing this one bit up over and over and over doesn't really prove anything, and isn't helpful.

dang 5y ago

Please don't take HN threads on offtopic flamewar tangents. What a useless train wreck. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

David Graeber also wrote (in the same book): >Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republi­can) computer engineers who broke from IBM

David Graeber also wrote (in the same book): >Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republi­can) computer engineers who broke from IBM

David Graeber also wrote (in the same book): >Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM

David Graeber also wrote (in the same book): >Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM