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Highly suspicious data collection methods.

“Well gee I walked around the office asking people if their job was essential and everybody said it was.”




It’s far far more rigorous and far less loaded than the question Graeber’s theory was based on.

Graeber’s question was, paraphrased, “do you think your job makes a meaningful contribution to the world”. This is an objectively loaded question. For example, I could rephrase that question as “do you think your job makes a contribution to the world” and lose absolutely nothing. The only purpose the “meaningful” adjective serves is to arbitrarily raise the bar for which people would answer yes to the question.

The only thing useful Graeber’s research possibly showed is that people with more education have a higher standard for what they consider a meaningful contribution to the world than people with less education.


Actually I think both surveys are meaningless. The meaningful part is that the popular interest seems to affirm a repressed feeling that is extremely common.




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