avi on decision making

Decision Making Reality, a video essay by Dr Khalil ‘Avi’ Betz-Heinemann via museum of care – 14 min video – dec 2023 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fsY0rfuQ8E]

avi intro’d later by maria as ‘anthropologist of deplorable animals, Dr Khalil ‘Avi’ Betz-Heinemann’

notes/quotes:

A video essay by Dr Khalil ‘Avi’ Betz-Heinemann exploring how decisions are made and how decisions make reality.

ooof.. decision making is unmooring us law et al.. black science of people/whales law

3 perspectives on how dm shapes development of humans and other animals: 1\ evolutionary ecology 2\ evolutionary psychology 3\ intergenerational learning

rather.. how decision making is unmooring us.. how it’s a cancerous distraction to legit free people..

i do this by paraphrasing the work of tim ingold and david graeber

david graeber

tim ingold [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ingold]: Timothy Ingold (born 1 November 1948) is a British anthropologist, and Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.. Ingold taught at the University of Helsinki (1973–74) .. In his recent work, he links the themes of environmental perception and skilled practice, replacing traditional models of genetic and cultural transmission, founded upon the alliance of neo-Darwinian biology and cognitive science, with a relational approach focusing on the growth of embodied skills of perception and action within social and environmental contexts of human development. This has taken him to examining the use of lines in culture, and the relationship between anthropology, architecture, art and design. He discusses his entire career in From science to art and back again: The pendulum of an anthropologist (2016). Writing within the anthropological realm of phenomenology, Ingold explores the human as an organism which ‘feels’ its way through the world that “is itself in motion”; constantly creating and being changed by spaces and places as they are encountered.

european enlightenment can be crudely summarized as giving rise to a fusion between antithetical ideas of individual freedom and dominion

individual freedom come from pre colonial .. people practicing free will

to me.. haven’t yet done that.. have no idea.. no history ness.. no research ness.. of what legit free people are like.. black science of people/whales law et al

dominion from practice of slavery..

fusion goes to core of how science emerged in post enlightenment.. as a juxtaposition between reason/nature.. subject/object.. mind/body.. where free thinking.. rational.. reasoning mind controls its body.. other parts of body as slaves/property..

2 min – as a child of the enlightenment .. neo classical econ developed as the science of dm and its aggregate consequences .. based on premise that every individual acts in pursuit of rational/enlightened self interest.. and that the aggregate of these choices is what guides humanity’s progress/civ

need curiosity over decision making

2 min – hence.. if you’re an animal/child/primitive-hunter-gatherer.. you aren’t part of reason .. you’re part of nature.. you’re not civilized.. so you need civilizing.. thru colonialism/schooling.. or the policing of nature..

any form of m\a\p

debate pursued.. came to.. maybe.. (they) could be acknowledged as human.. as reasonable..

3 min – in light of this.. economists ‘ok .. if so.. can explain it by attaching a utility value to each unit of resource they hunt and gather.. and measure it in terms of the satisfaction it yields.. by this rational we can call them reasonable’.. for non human animals.. darwin: animals do because of evil force of natural selection rather than reason..

4 min – so can we apply that back to humans.. yes.. humans and natural selection.. ie: foraging behavior of h/g.. cognition algo’s shaped process.. by non & humans.. formulas not genetically encoded..

5 min – however.. w humans.. formulas contained w/in bodies of cultural info passed on in manner analogous to genetic transmission.. this cultural transmission.. viewed as simple process of copying.. in which whole inventory of formulas are downloaded into the empty mind of the novice who then expresses them like a gene expresses a phenotype

genotype-phenotype gap et al

6 min – weird.. that’s eminently not how learning works.. but wait.. another set of darwinists say.. the evolutionary psychologists point out there are diff’s in natural selection.. but acting on mech for downloading this transmission.. analogous to the biological mech of inheritance.. they contend that this mech is the true thing that natural selection acts on.. nothing acquired/learned.. unless already some innate mech already in place to decode the cultural transmission.. need a computer in order to read the internet

again.. we have no idea how learning works for legit free people.. but am imagining.. the how ness of it.. that we are so obsessed with.. is inconsequential if legit free.. rather.. has been for us.. a cancerous distraction

no prep.. no train.. supposed to’s of school/work et al

7 min – what’s more.. these innate info processing mechs.. don’t only make transmission of culture possible.. they also impose their structure on what can be learned and how.. for them.. it’s the study of these mechs under natural selection that is the important thing to study.. of course this means.. men are better at some things than women .. like hunting.. and women better .. like gathering.. et al.. some humans are innately better than others.. so you see.. stages of high/low order in life become in tact.. supposedly..

aka: sea world via iterating whalespeak et al

8 min – this is where anthro tim ingold takes issue.. he points out at very least.. *humans not born w ready made info processing mechs.. have to go thru anti genesis.. being in womb.. growing from child to adult.. so at best.. if mech existed.. could only emerge as part of development of human in social context.. so not possible to distinguish these mechs or their emergence from the multi species ecology.. but really.. zero evidence of such mechs in first place.. in sum.. evolutionary psychologists.. try to create a coherent account of nature.. but are **blind to the development of human behavior w/in the social environ/conditions they grow in

*yeah.. to me.. if that’s so.. they are cancerous distraction.. born with all we need and sans all we don’t.. ie: not yet scrambled ness et al..

**still cancerous distraction.. ‘behavior’ and ‘behavior’ in sea world.. irrelevant

hari rat park law

9 min – evol psych’s.. seek to show human nature responding to variations in environ thru ideas of cultural transmission.. but lack a coherent account of actual human nature..

to me.. thinking we could have a coherent account of human nature.. is a cancerous distraction

i want to extend these thoughts.. like many neural scientists.. evol psychs are doing a standard maneuver here.. *when something seems unexplained.. they continually outsource dm and free will to yet another so called higher component of the body .. nervous system, part of brain, et al.. they admit they can never explain.. but expect us to accept having reduced everything to some kind of mindless conduit and info processing bunch of nodes.. but we still have to believe these are under the domain of some higher function..which they can never explain

*irrelevant what is done.. or not done.. as long as still in sea world

10 min – one could argue that this endless outsourcing to an invisible higher order.. dare i say invisible hand.. reflects an ideology that’s so deeply hierarchical/biblical that they can only see in fixed hierarchies of coercive domination.. t

wilde not-us law et al

need 1st/most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature as global detox/re\set.. so we can org around legit needs

and when it comes to the evol ecologists.. they’re dependent on this idea of life as nodes transmitting info .. emerging out of a transactional logic.. basically capitalism.. and they utterly fail to appreciate what the relationality of life.. but instead maintain object orientative philosophy.. grounded in the history of private property ideals.. manifest in property deeds or blue prints.. inherited or sold over generations that pretend for ie that farm can be rep’d by a property deed.. like a human can be rep’d by a genetic code

again.. that sounds good/better.. but makes little diff if still in sea world..

hari rat park law

11 min – any meaningful farmer.. will tell you the reality of farm is amazing amt of love/care that relations that one has w soil/animals/people.. these aren’t captured w/in deeds.. so get lost in big land transactions.. but big land owner.. industrial soil miner.. does not see this.. and instead imports more inputs.. transmissions of fertilizer.. to overcome having to acknowledge this fact.. in recent piece of work by ingold.. he demos how logic of inheritance used by darwinists.. in many sense was directly copied from property deed inheritance practices..

12 min – ingold contends that learning depends on relationships between more/less experienced people in situ.. in hands on context.. in practice.. means to put reproduction of these relationships .. not genetic replication.. or cultural transmission of some formula of cultural instructions.. that the continuity of a practice learnt depends.. and the ability to make decisions about how you go about that practice

perhaps rather.. depends on nothing.. irrelevant..

‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows

13 min – hence.. it makes no sense to speak of culture as an independent body of context free knowledge that is available for transmission prior to the situation of its application.. the additional implication here.. is that we did not evolve as competitive actors w/in a world.. but that we have intergenerationally/socially learned w the world to make decisions about our practices..

and that reactive ness.. (even though it sounds better) just perpetuates same song ness..

need curiosity over decision making

imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness as nonjudgmental expo labeling)

what will you decide to do as part of our world.. how will you play and self org and see what we can create.. or will you try to force your goals on everyone else.. and justify this thru an invisible higher order that makes decisions in your brain.. or is inherited from some old pedigree tree that ought to be dead by now

this video essay intended as a supplement to dgi series on animal play..

sources:

tim ingold’s ch ‘the optimal forager and econ man’ in descola and palsson’s ‘nature and society’ (1996)

tim ingold’s paper ‘evolution w/o inheritance: steps to an ecology of learning’ in current anthroplogy (2023)

david graeber’s book ‘debt’ (2011)

debt (book)