this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Check out "The Dawn of Everything" by Wengrow and Graeber

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Different point of view on your “source”, which is a mass market paperback made to sell and be consumed, not for serious scientific inquiry.

https://libcom.org/article/wrong-about-almost-everything-review-dawn-everything-david-graeber-david-wengrow

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

This author is a crackpot that also went after Chomsky. Chomsky had a hilarious rebuttal from what I remember. He really has a thing for anarchists. I'll trust these critics more when they do published rebuttals. I'm pretty sure several chapters in this book were published in some journals.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah it's a summary work that draws on decades of research. Both of these authors are extremely well-published in their respective fields. I'm like a third of the way through Dawn of Everything and it's just as academic as "Debt" was, and neither are mass-market pulp. But work like this always draws hit pieces because it's a way for critics to get their name out there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Yeah, that critic made a career on doing hit pieces. I also find it unconvincing lmao.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

What I find interesting about this article is that it critiques heavily about the first 200 pages, says almost nothing about the next 600, and then says the conclusion is unsatisfactory because it didn't quote the book the author wrote in 1991. It's transparently personal.

Academics write books. Get over it.