Most of what I’ve gotten out of the book as been lenses for viewing coordination issue, and less “XYZ events in history happened because of ABC.” (and skimming the posts you linked , they seemed more to do with the latter)
I think when I read Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan was the first time I immediately afterwards googled “book name criticism”. Taleb had made some minor claim about network theory being not used for anything practical, which turned out to just be wrong (a critic cited it being used for developing solutions to malaria outbreaks). Seeing that made me realize had hadn’t even wondered whether or not the claim was true when I first read it. Since then I’ve been more credulous of any given details an author uses, unless it seems like a “basic” element of their realm of expertise (like, I don’t doubt and of the anthropological details Graeber presented about the Tiv, though I may disagree with his extrapolations)
Worth reading the mountains of criticism of this book, e.g. these blog posts. I still got something interesting out of reading it though.
Most of what I’ve gotten out of the book as been lenses for viewing coordination issue, and less “XYZ events in history happened because of ABC.” (and skimming the posts you linked , they seemed more to do with the latter)
I think when I read Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan was the first time I immediately afterwards googled “book name criticism”. Taleb had made some minor claim about network theory being not used for anything practical, which turned out to just be wrong (a critic cited it being used for developing solutions to malaria outbreaks). Seeing that made me realize had hadn’t even wondered whether or not the claim was true when I first read it. Since then I’ve been more credulous of any given details an author uses, unless it seems like a “basic” element of their realm of expertise (like, I don’t doubt and of the anthropological details Graeber presented about the Tiv, though I may disagree with his extrapolations)