Ideas are like investments, you don’t want just want a well diversified portfolio, you want to intentionally hedge against other assets. In this view, the best way to develop a scout’s mindset for yourself is to read a wide variety of writers, many of whom will be quite dogmatic. The goal shouldn’t be to only read other reasonable people, but to read totally unreasonable people across domains and synthesize their claims into something coherent.
As you correctly note, Graeber is a model thinker in a world of incoherent anarchist/marxist ramblings. I think our options are to either dismiss the perspective altogether (reasonable, but tragic) or take his factual claims with a grain of salt, while acknowledging his works as fountain of insight.
I would happily accept the criticism if there were any anarchist/marxist thinker alive today reasoning more clearly than Graeber, but I don’t think there is.
I will read every one of his books and treasure his variance. But his mistakes and distortions are not incidental to his positions, and people take him more seriously than they should.
Ideas are like investments, you don’t want just want a well diversified portfolio, you want to intentionally hedge against other assets. In this view, the best way to develop a scout’s mindset for yourself is to read a wide variety of writers, many of whom will be quite dogmatic. The goal shouldn’t be to only read other reasonable people, but to read totally unreasonable people across domains and synthesize their claims into something coherent.
As you correctly note, Graeber is a model thinker in a world of incoherent anarchist/marxist ramblings. I think our options are to either dismiss the perspective altogether (reasonable, but tragic) or take his factual claims with a grain of salt, while acknowledging his works as fountain of insight.
I would happily accept the criticism if there were any anarchist/marxist thinker alive today reasoning more clearly than Graeber, but I don’t think there is.
Agree with all of this.
I will read every one of his books and treasure his variance. But his mistakes and distortions are not incidental to his positions, and people take him more seriously than they should.