 Hello and welcome. This is Active Inference guest stream 76.1. It's March 26th, 2024. And we're here with Anna Pereira talking about wellness science through the lens of active inference. There will be a presentation and a discussion. So if you're watching live, looking forward to your questions. Thank you again for joining and to you for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. It's certainly exciting to be here. And I was so excited to find this community to see all the work that's being done in this space and to have the opportunity to participate. So thank you. Quick note that this is all still, I mean, it feels like the active inference site space is still young. And so this draft is part of that. So we've done our best to do key citations and images and stuff here. But please know that this is all early and working and I'm excited to get feedback. And also to talk about any organic mutualistic collaborations that might come out of it. But more than anything, I hope that you all each find the lens and the content of this presentation helpful to yourself and in your own experience. All right. So with that, I'll just go ahead and dive in. I like to start with a story. I think one of the things you'll notice about this presentation is it's more in a mass consumer sort of format. Something you might see it like a TED type presentation. And so you'll see more images and more words coming for myself and message me if you want any of the citations that might not be covered in this sort of format. But I typically like to open with a story. So I used to be chasing a version of the American dream. And I found that I was chasing a lot of consumerism, doing a lot of socially acceptable numbing and running away from things in my pastor that were actually even caught in my own individual active inference cycle. And it left me feeling like this more often than perhaps not. And active inference actually ended up being the key piece that was really missing as I created a life and experience a life that feels more and more like this more often. And so that's my goal of this work. And of this presentation, like not only to borrow off of any questions or expertise that you all have or feel like sharing, but also the path feels much easier for me now. But in the past, it was highly ineffective, highly cost intensive, time intensive. And so it's my hope to help make it smoother for others who wish to make similar journeys. And so that's what it is, show some of this knowledge with you. Okay, so to this group of people, I'm sure I don't have to explain who this person is. But, you know, one of my favorite facts, other than I like to call Carl, for instance, mine the single most densely intelligent brain I've ever tried to step into. And yeah, well, we'll see what awards he ends up getting in the future is that his citations now already total half of Sigmund Freud's. And Freud is part, while perhaps actually I could say factually not as robust science as active inferences, it is a part of the common vernacular. And so one of my hopes is to be a bridge between the beauty of this really dense science that's happening to a more common vernacular to help enable people to live more fulfilling lives and enact on their intentions. So as I break down this model in a very simple way, you'll see a lot of the formulas are kind of kept to the side and the images themselves have been started to be distilled and very simple to understand sort of ways. And so we can start to share this principle. Yeah, so given this audience, I'm going to go through that fairly quickly. Usually, usually I have to break this down a lot more. There is one thing I'll mention is it's really interesting to think about like your experience right now, what's happening. And I think we all know that you're using your eyes and your ears to watch me you're making inferences in your mind about what I'm saying and then you're going to act based on that. And then you're going to learn in your mind based on that. So you're doing it right now. And then you can start to take things like, I think many of us have already thought about how PTSD, right you hear a noise. You infer that in your more danger than you probably are you act in a way to protect yourself and because your active inference cycle has already been so muddled, you've now learned that you know that behavior pattern might protect you in the future and accurately learn that based on the environment. But you can also take things like anxiety disorder right one in five people of us people will likely experience that so that means each of us who are watching it either have experienced it or know someone well, who has and so you can see how that leads to a heightened sensitivity of perceived threats in the mind you're more apt to predict negative or threatening outcomes and then you're inclined to act out of fear based on that and then you're going to learn avoidance behaviors, avoidance behaviors. So you can see how active inference starts to affect our lives in a lot of ways and you'll see that threat theme through through the talk. And one of the things I really like about active inference is it's so robust that you can create this deep belief in it in you so even in the moments when you're struggling the most, you know that you have this process running within you. And if you feed it if you address it, it can be very enabling. You can believe in it and then it can be very enabling for you. Okay, so let's step into some specific examples are no way actually I want to pull for one more thing. So we know a little bit of the process of how now as humans there's two more key components there's our anatomy and and our intentions like what are we trying to do and why specific to humans so I like to take the hierarchy of needs. Marcel's hierarchy of needs and change it to hierarchy of intentions. So you have basic needs and Bernay rounds work around some of this is also really helpful to pull in here. But down there you could be at like safety and psychological needs. So if I were to share my specific intentions in this space as a way for example, it would be to provide to enable myself, family and those around me. And I'll give you a quick moment to maybe reflect on what yours are how you might slightly tweak those. I do find that mind change over time, which matches with various learning theory models of how we as humans can mature over time. Then you have a psychological. So topics like belonging and esteem from our communities. So one way I word that for myself specifically is to foster family community. Thank you community for welcoming me right now. And relationships that enables belonging and substance. And then self actualization which is a very broad term that encompasses things like personal achievement realization of one's highest capacities and contribution to the greater good. So for me that's the intention of living my fullest potential by living a fulfilling life and enabling others to do the same. And it's really interesting to think that the higher we go up the pyramid the more individualized the needs are. Which is why I think some of the excitement around AI and this larger space and wellness comes from because we now have a new tool that can help us to do that. And perhaps build on these principles to do that in a very accessible and individualizable way. Okay, so let's put this together in some specific examples you see where how we're pulling from a large breath of science and fields of study. So let's talk about emotions. So the environment is full of uncertainty and emotions are this signal that is allowing it that is providing key information about the environment. I almost consider it to like a Tesla driving around with half its sensors covered up is when we distance ourselves or deny our emotions feelings. The emotions I'm using very broadly here if you go if you dive into that field and includes states of body feelings emotions. So that larger space is like driving around with half of our sensors covered up. And so it's starting to learn about how do we make use of these signals in effective ways, not get bogged down on them, not get them trapped and not deny them. And so for many of us for or many of the people that I've had a talk through a chance to talk with. And in my own experience, starting with things like the emotion wheel and Bernay Brown's book Atlas of the Heart were two highly effective tools. So for example, if I'm experiencing difficult emotion that I don't fully understand, I can feel it in my body. I can feel pulling at the thought to my mind. I walk over to the emotion wheel and I work my way down and I'm actually like, oh, I'm not feeling sad. I'm feeling isolated or even like today. I'm feeling a type of fear, but it's not overwhelm. And it I don't know I was able to work through it to a point where I actually switched, moved through those fears and ended up more and excited. Although occasionally I still feel the fear a little bit. But that's okay because I know that's a natural part of my cycle. And I just let it go instead of getting caught behind it. And then when I get really stuck, I can go to Bernay Brown's book Atlas of the Heart and she organizes these within sections and explains ways that we can work through them. And then I can go ahead and process it, maybe pull my journal out and work through it. So finding ways as humans based on our anatomy, our experiences to make use of those emotions in our active inference cycle so they don't get caught in the sense part of the cycle. So we could even we can take this further into like the space of meditation. You know, if we think about the active inference cycle running within us, very little of it is conscious. The overwhelming majority of it is in the subconscious space. And so that's what can be so beautiful about taking time to explore that space. And there's a number of ways to do it. Meditation is one that's quite popular and easy to access at the moment. There's things like mindful eating, finding a sensor sensory deprivation tank. People can even experience it in things like runners high dream journaling morning pages. Psychedelics is another space with a lot of research behind it at the moment. And so again, as we think about our intentions for our life, perhaps living to our fullest potential, enabling others to do the same. There's this idea of, wow, there's these other spaces we can get really wonderful experiences and information from and exploring the subconscious thought is part of that. And what you're essentially doing in that if you think about your active inference cycle is you're placing yourself in a safe environment where you don't have to think about it. You're dissolving that barrier between your mind and your body and you're slowing the cycle. So you're essentially looking at it from a different perspective and using different systems within your body. Okay, so I'd like to pull in the divided brains theory from McGill Christ and this audience is worth noting that it's highly simplified model. I know if we were to get a group of neuroscientists in here, we would talk about how this is oversimplified and there's a lot of things happening. But I think when we want to think about distilling this to a high level and disseminating it. I think the science still holds really true to the foundation and the larger picture of this as long as we pull in how important integration is, which we do touch on here, both here and in other parts. But what's really great to think about the divided brain theory is that as a human we have this anatomy we have this experience to be to dive deep into both. And so I know in the past I was very left brain heavy very analog analog scientific sort of space but there's this whole right brain of like experiencing life and music and beauty that and creativity that we can also pull from. And so now I intentionally exercise both I do activities that enable both. So the on the left side it would be thing like puzzles games math number related activities step by step instructions studying programming and coding. And then the right would be more like creative activities time and nature musical instruments reading poetry I run a little what's that poetry group now explore new places and activities. And it's when we enable both that we're enabling our fullest anatomy to our fullest potential so you can almost think about it as the active inference cycle illustrated by like half of mine versus the whole minds. So we can also think about the practice of journaling and why again it's something that's sort of coming into the larger conversation at the moment. Why it can be so helpful for us and for example I can find journaling most helpful when I'm stuck on something. When it's something that's important to me it's in the way of my intentions or it's trying to inform my intentions or it keeps coming up in my thought process over and over again. And so if I go pick up my journal and I spend some time writing about it what I'm essentially doing is I'm turning on different parts of my anatomy that enable my active inference cycle. So I'm turning on the prefrontal cortex while I'm reflecting and writing about my thoughts which is involved that part of the brain is involved in regulating emotions and problem solving. I'm also turning on things like the limbic system in the hippocampus which are helping with more emotional processing and learning. So essentially by changing my activity putting some consciousness around the activity that I'm doing in my active inference cycle I'm enabling more awareness insight in problem solving. Right. This is about the point in time where I wish I could see you all and see if you had questions but I'll keep going. Do you know you can reach out to me I'm sure we can figure out a way to put my email on this great. Okay so let's step into the body a bit and talk about that because it's a key part of the cycle. And sometimes I find the way I think about it has made some big changes for me. So I think if you're watching this talk you probably already know what you should be doing in order to enable your body. So I don't want to spend a lot of time there. Instead what I do want to talk about is where some of us end up which is an experience I used to have in the past. I was trying to hold and do everything that I thought I needed to be doing and sometimes for disenabling intentions. And so for me if I think about it I was a woman coming out of Western society who often felt valued for the way I was perceived by others. And so I would often work out as a way to try and attain the societal norms of beauty that I as a woman felt that I needed to obtain. And so what ended up happening when I was working out I was really kind of disconnecting what my mind needed. I wasn't doing it from this like fully integrated place. I was chasing this idea of I need to do hard intense workouts that make my muscles look a certain way in order to be valued by others. And it was really draining and it was not sustainable in times of stress. Instead I shifted my intention to work out to enable my active inference cycle. I can be that nerdy with this group. I love that I can. And that was a really big shift for me. I found when I was working out that my mind and my body integrated and connected a lot more. I found that my body had helpful signals. I could send my mind when I was working out like things around perfectionism or over stress or strain in various areas. And it's turned into this really beautiful practice of enabling my active inference cycle. And often as an extra bonus, it does make my genes fit a little bit better. But that's really not the intention behind it. So I haven't really prepared that example from maybe a nominal male perspective or a non gender specific example at the moment. But I wanted to share that as an example of how shifting our intentions and aligning it with a larger active inference cycle can help us enable ourselves in the area of our body. Okay, so this is a really fun one. The Polyvagal Theory, a Steppenforg's brilliant work in the space, starts to talk about how we connect with one another, which then builds on symbiotic relationships and how we, if we move the mark off blanket from just us as individuals to larger communities. So his says that we can essentially be in three different states. We can be at the lower level of social engagement, we can be in fight or flight, or we can be in freeze. And that is based on the perception of threats. So Daniel, thanks for helping me feel safe right now. And based on that perception of threats, a whole different systems in the body turn on and they're associated with each and based on those various nervous systems turning on. Along with a lot of other systems, because this is a simplified image, we have different experiences. So when I'm on the bottom, which I try and stay in when I'm in a talk, because then I can be grounded, calm, curious, open and compassionate. Like the message can come out in very genuine way. When I'm in a place of anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, worry, rage, right, you can see how it starts to break down. And you can also now think about us being in community with one another, right. If I'm in conversation with you, or you're having a conversation with a friend, and they're feeling this anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, worry, rage. You can see how it gets in the way. And then you can see how it gets in the way even more when you go up even higher into dissociation, numbness, depression, hopelessness. And the active inference cycles of scientists, this is when you just get so happy, right, you see two theories come together so beautifully. You can see how it impacts the active inference cycle in each of those stages. So when I'm grounded and calm, in the bottom, I don't feel threatened. I have the physiological systems in my body running that most enable me. My active inference cycle is running as it should. As I feel more threatened and those other systems come on, as I go to fight, you can see my active inference really move between my body and the environment or flight. I'm really removing myself from the environment with just my mind or my body. And then when you're up at freeze or faint, you essentially have the active inference cycle stop functioning or just fall off. So this some, yeah, let's do one more exercise and then I'll bring it in closing. So that's the theory. Let's see if we can try and invoke a bit of the feeling. So for a moment, just reflect on you alone in the cosmos. Versus you belonging within the universe. And so if you just felt that shift, that was you moving up and down within the poly bagel theory. You just experienced what that was in your body. And so for me, one of the areas I really found it helpful to apply this. And I should mention, as I've started to grow in this body of work, I'm also taking a coaching class. So I'm studying how to disseminate some of this and actually practicing disseminating it. So I guess I can also say what I see resonate with some of my co chiefs as well as myself is that just acknowledging that this is part of our wiring. As humans, the vast majority of us and we have it's almost like an airplane model where we just have redundant system after redundant redundant system for connection. As we engage in those, we help move ourselves down to more calm grounded creative states in what we're doing and taking the time to intentionally feed that intentionally build communities around us, enable us in our intentions. And I think it's also really important to notice here note here that society and culture has made it very easy for us to be separated from others. So if we are feeling lonely, it's important to acknowledge that there's a stigma around that that is often unfair and inaccurate. And is rather the need for us to be more intentional about it in a society and culture that doesn't always foster it. So I would say, nothing's wrong with you. You're feeling lonely. And it's about finding ways to be intentional of making more connection. Okay. So we can talk a little bit about environments. Actually, let's talk about mutualism and connection with others. Okay. So we can also think about in this group, I'll use the word mark off like it, putting around not only ourselves, but our significant, our partners, our communities, we could even extend that to include our pets or the parks around us. And what does that look like. And that's where I think it continues to get really beautiful of active inference. And how it encourages mutualism, symbiotic relationships that are beneficial for all. And you can see this for examples existing already, right? International aid is a beautiful system where we're all supporting one another, right? If something catastrophic hits one area, you can see the rest of humanity mobilized to help enable that area. And as you can see this play out really beautifully is in PC gaming where mutualistic behavior allows you to be more innovative, complete, more complex initiatives together. And you can also see what happens to people who don't participate in that way and how the community responds to that. And it's also interesting to put a lens on this about what does it mean for future generations. So you can take it beyond this time and place, including, you know, how much would we love the idea of mutualism if we were no longer at the top. Yeah, so I'll go ahead and pull a few more ideas in before moving towards closing. And again, do feel free to follow up with questions. Essentially, active inference tells us how to hold enables us to hold uncertainty. And that's a large part of what society is feeling right now, like there's this collective angst, because we are going through rapid change. And so if we are able to enable our active inference cycles more, we'll be able to navigate this rapid change more. Whether that's integrating AI and society, handling things like climate change, those sort of spaces. And so, but we have these systems that are wired to protect us and keep us safe. So we also need to be intentional about how we feed and enable our active inference cycle. So for example, my time on social media, like not only am I careful not to spend too much time there where we know fear can spread like a contagion among a number of other things that can happen. It also enables me to connect with others and see beautiful, you know, cute photos of cats and dogs. But I'm intentional on how I feed my social media feed, right? What am I liking? What am I putting into it? And what am I not? And I, for example, have a Reddit feed that's full of uplifting content. So I do enjoy going to it. And then on Instagram, I tend to keep it shorter and really check in with friends and family, and then often choose to step away. So I find a way where I feel like I'm taking the best from social media for me, but also making sure that I'm not feeding that fear cycle overfeeding it. And then I also think about music and how that affects my active inference cycle. If we know that a lot of what's happening in our consciousness and our active inference cycle is subconscious, I think about that in music. So often if I want to listen to something upbeat, I listen to it in a language that I don't understand. So I don't actually have to worry if those words are necessarily uplifting in my active inference cycle or not. And I actually do suddenly feel a difference in my body. Gratitude practice is another area with a lot of research behind it, just pulling moments throughout the day or even having a little gratitude journal in the evening. Again, thinking about, OK, well, how can I be aware of the actual state of the world, but also stay balanced and grounded and calm? Like, how can I feed my active inference cycle to enable it to be that way? Going and doing things that invoke things like awe, wonder and curiosity is another really great space. Now, and also it's interesting to think about, OK, what are we holding within us that we haven't had a chance to process through our active inference cycle? Part of that for me was realizing that I wanted to work through steps of forgiveness. And it's interesting to define forgiveness. I didn't take a chance to do it here, but it doesn't necessarily mean you need to welcome that in back into your space. Instead, it's about acknowledging what happened, acknowledging maybe how you played in that, how you contribute to it, how you were involved in that, and then letting it go. So essentially moving it through your system. And then obviously certain religious practices put other things on top of that, and I want to welcome that. But I'm just going to share like the very foundational sort of definition here. Yes, it's really interesting to think about communication and active inference. Like think about how brilliant our active inference cycle is within each of us. And now when we try and engage with each other, how small of a fiber, how small of bandwidth communication is. And that's why taking the time to study or read up on some communication books and think about, okay, how can I communicate effectively can be so valuable. We really do have limited bandwidth there. And taking the time to sharpen those skills really can help enable us in our connection with others. And then another idea I'm playing around with, I call it bandwidth right now. I don't think that's going to be the word in the end. I think it's more like cultivating. But essentially, we want to make our active inference cycle as effective as possible. And so the word I have right now is bandwidth. But I think I think I'll end up playing with that things that shrink that are things like blaming, controlling, trying to change others aversion grasping. These are all limited in their effectiveness and require high levels of energy. Each of those can be broken down as to what systems they're turning on and where that energy is getting blocked. I won't do that here. But I will say again, Renee Brown's work can be really great in the space. Things like blame if I'm blaming someone that's usually a signal to me that I need to move into another space and I can feel it in my body and my energy level as I do that. As I move towards things like acceptance, self compassion, non judgment, awareness, mindfulness, enabling boundaries are all enabling the cycle more. Although sometimes it does mean a short term increased discomfort. So for example, if I need to set a boundary with somebody, it might be hard for me to do that. It might be hard to acknowledge that it might be a difficult conversation with the person. But then after I put that in space in place, and I've done that with compassion and empathy, I'll then have more space to run my active inference cycle effectively. So sometimes there is initial discomfort, but then the payoff is afterwards. Yeah, and this is them. I'm going to see how big of a bridge I can build right now because I realized they am pulling from active inference and I'm applying it very right brain. But I would like to pull to this idea of inner goodness and still playing around with the words there. But if we think about the neurobiology of empathy, oxycontin and how it creates bonding and social interactions, stress responses and social support, the pleasure in giving in our biological reward systems. We have systems and processes. We already saw an active inference and how that encourages mutualism and also physiological processes that enable inner goodness within us. And if I really go right brain, I'll say that I draw hope from that. That as we enable our active inference cycles, we enable this physiology within us more and more. So remembering that I have these systems of inner goodness within me and everyone else does, but that there's a lot of stuff interfering with our active inference cycle right now. But we have this beautiful science of active inference cycle that can help us clean it up gives me a lot of compassion, empathy and hope, both for myself and others. Okay, so I actually have one more section I think we should include. And this is really stretching the bridge. But I don't think we are if you actually get down into the definitions of it. Spirituality and the definition, the bridge definition of spirituality from the Webster dictionary is attention on the human spirit or soul beyond the material or the physical. So I want to make it very clear that you can be an atheist. You can follow a formalized religion, agnostic, most anything within that space and still reflect on the space of spirituality. Because in the end, we are humans, and we get to have the experience of being human. And there's something magical about sitting in that experience and reflecting on it. For those who do practice more formalized religions, it's interesting to think about how you can pull in active inference cycle into that particular religion that you might be practicing. I only have a few examples here to throw up, but just to give you a chance to think about it. What is important from the science perspective, the active inference perspective as we think about mutualism is two things. The two sort of boundaries that we put around the spaces of spirituality and religion. One is we have a harder time when it creates disbelief of robust science. And when dogmatic beliefs create increased conflict. So if we were to put two boundaries, this is a great practice of boundaries where we welcome you, we want you in this space, and we were to put two boundaries around it. Those are the two that we would start to put in place. And I don't have the specific citations handy. They're in my footnotes here, but if you'd like them, I can share them. Okay, so in closing, I'd like to leave you with some personal thoughts and reflections in hopes of inspiring your own. So I went through a lot of really big changes. I used to be in the Bay Area working in big tech. I am now in Portugal working on this personal passion project. I had a number of health things happen at the same time. And I would say also my, for lack of better words, way of being within the world has shifted. And I would say my active inference cycle is much more enabled, but also enabled that. I would say ultimately I am living a life that I find much more fulfilling, enables me to enable others more. And that I'm much, I don't want to say happier within, but I would say there is more joy and more experiences of joy. And that essentially the really key piece was active inference and applying it to the larger space of wellness science, but also learning how to experience it within me, right? If we're going to pull from both the right and the left side of the brain, it's not all the chalkboard. Half of it is the experience of living it. And ultimately, and it's kind of almost like a doctor breaking the bad news. Like it wasn't the science doesn't tell me that it's a single hack. And I don't think everyone's changes needs to be as extreme as my own. I think that was related to my personal set of circumstances. But it's more of a lifestyle. It's more of a larger intention than I'm just going to do this one single thing. But it's also all about baby steps. So I suppose since we know we're so good with intentions, I would invite you to take a moment to think about, okay, what's one or two or three things, maybe one for the mind, one for the body, one for the environment that resonated for me in this talk. And what are my intentions that I'm going to do with it to enable my own personal active inference? So I'll just give you a moment to reflect on that. For the mind, it could have been something around mindfulness or meditation, could maybe be thinking about working through a forgiveness, exercise, journaling. It could be reflecting on this model more for the body. It could be maybe your intentions around it. Some way you're going to enact to enable your environment more. Okay. And then I guess in closing, I'll just share a little bit about what I'm hoping to do with this work. If I think about the hierarchy of intentions, you know, on the bottom level, I think it's worth noting that I am exploring how to do this work outside the typical academic model, because I think it means I can focus more time on it because now AI can help contribute that. So there is a question of, you know, how am I going to monetize this in a modest way to enable myself and those around me? But I'm not looking to similar to following Carl, for instance, sort of initiative, not looking to patent everything and LLC everything, but find a balance there and do it in a mutualism way. If I think about the middle, you know, with this work, I'm hoping to create community around it, enable community around it and help others derive belonging as substance from it. And then if I think about the top, it's fulfilling work for me. I love doing it and I hope to continue doing it. And I hope this work, I can use it to help others also find more fulfilling lives. So I want to be really transparent in my intentions with this because I'm very open to collaborations. I'm currently exploring a social media campaign so we can start to see what resonates, like how do we meet people where they're at and what resonates with them, start to get some information on that. And then I've also enlisted a really great New York Times best-selling ghost writer and thinking about how do we package this in infographics and highly distilled principles that are absorbable to a large number of people. So we're trying to follow up model, if you remember from the early thousands or late 90s, don't sweat the small stuff. You know, something very small, easy to pick up at a bookstore. And then, yeah, I'll be transparent with this group. This is probably a really amazing research project for AI and how do you develop a tool there? I'm excited by that idea, but it's also perhaps out of my grasp at the moment. That's a pretty big project. So yeah, thanks for taking the time, creating the space. And I hope you found some helpful information for you and inspired you in some way. Thank you. Wow. Many ways to go. I wrote down many things. I will read first a question from the live chat and we'll just get right into it. All right, let's do it. Okay. Okay. Yin Yang Balance wrote, talking about the mind, brain and body. Are you aware of the second brain guts and the brain gut axis? This concept would affect how you define the boundary between the mind and the body. So my answer to that would be yes and no. I think if you, I don't remember the author of the book, the moment, but to the point, that barrier between the mind and the body is with a dash line intentionally, because there are many systems that overlap and you could expand it and contract it to, like the definition is not black and white. So I would say from what I'm understanding of that theory, it would make a lot of sense to me. We get signals from various parts of the body. And often we categorize stuff in the mind that actually is living in the brain. So yes, it probably does encompass components of that theory. And I do hope that in the book, and as we develop this concept, we pull out the intricate systems that run between the body and the mind more in an easy to distill way. We just, we haven't had a chance to do it so clearly here. The dash line is a great touch. Often the idea of an interface or boundary or Markov blanket is seen as isolating, but it's actually the coupling entity, the piece that connects the inner and the outer, connecting the internal states and the external states. It is their coupling. So that's like kind of literally the two sides of the coin. And that's why the dash line is a nice graphical motif because it is permeable. It isn't like an isolating boundary. It's actually like the interface that maps between those two very different worlds. Yeah. There's so many places to jump in, I guess, maybe with intention was one thing I kind of wrote down and connecting to the idea inactive inference that the actions that are taken, whether they're like external actions going on a walk or whether it's an internal action like attention and choice internally, the actions are selected based upon them being likely, not based upon them being rewarding. So in the kind of cultural milieu of reward and maximization, optimization and reward learning computationally, there's this idea like there's some scale and then we should select different actions based upon like how high they score on that reward scale, whether it's like a job or a personal life. When we have this concept that our actions are selected based upon them being likely or just consistent or confirmatory, then there's a direct route from the intention to taking the action because the intention kind of sets the stage for something to be likely and that covers positive intentions. It also kind of covers where attentions go or I because a malicious intention is also still fulfilled even when it doesn't have anything rewarding about it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what makes me so excited about collaborating in this space, right? Like you have this inner depth of knowledge and active inference and you're so quickly able to see how the formulas and it all comes together. And it is really interesting because on one hand you have that and another is really interesting to pull in from Buddhist traditions because you have people who without the formulas have been thinking about how effectively do I do how do I do this effectively and you actually see them come over together in so many ways. And like I just saw an example of that in what you were saying. Interesting. Another little kind of like history trail that connects to that is Carl Friston's earlier work was in neuroimaging. And so that's kind of like the view from the outside. It's unknown what the person in the fMRI machine is thinking but you do have access to like their blood flow. And so there's a lot of the mathematics developed about that view from the outside. And then more recently there have been so many creative contributions from people from different like meditation and contemplation practices focused on the view from the inside and that is like it's approaching the dashed line from both sides and they're meeting in the middle because the formalism could help like a behavioral researcher talk about an ant on the ground from the outside and then also it's like in some ways more powerful or differently powerful like directly us in the driver's seat. And so that was one thing that really I think stays with me from your presentation and complements a lot of the other work is like a lot of the other work is us on the side looking at that car drive by but we're in our own bodies. And so that's a very different kind of engagement even if the situation of a car driving down the road is the same. It really matters if you're on the sideline versus if you're in the car. Yeah. Yeah. These are beautiful examples. Another really fun one I was having speaking neuroimaging and this sort of space exploring yesterday as this idea of harmony, right? You feel harmony but turn neuroimaging. It's a great question of like well what's happening within the body and the name of the specific networks that we're lighting up and when it was in expected patterns versus unexpected patterns and then also how the music itself is built on patterns. So you start to again really see that right brain like oh I can feel harmony, I sense harmony but there's also this left brain of oh there's mathematical patterns that are happening within the music. Different cultures build different patterns within that music and oh by the way my brain is lighting up in different ways depending on what's expected and if it's out of tune or in tune. It's just really beautiful how it all comes together. Yes. The left brain, right brain it's like and the integration half a brain is less than half a brain. It's non-functional and it just made me think about the active inference learning journey and about how the kinds of activities on that path you listed many like just making poetry or making a drawing and those are not detours in our holistic understanding but a lot of science or technical education has kind of implicitly or explicitly framed the artistic or the aesthetic or the personal as like a detour or like even a no-go zone basically whereas especially in a time when we have computational intelligences that are PhD level plus plus plus on the technical details. So then having the intention and the awareness and an aesthetic can get someone further in just like a few prompts than like studying till the end of time and even like coming from research you can study numbers your whole life and you still would have only explored a little bit of numbers. There's a time to just like put it down and play with it and I think with all of the scientific threads you brought together it's kind of like we have enough threads to make this web of associations into something that people can actually use for their own local positive ends and that is not just like a research rabbit hole it's not like you just go to the researcher who came up with Pauli Weigel and dive down down down down I mean where does that reductionist journey take you? Like okay to the membrane of a neuron firing or not based upon permeability it's like is that what's at the end of the road or is there another route that instead of just escaping and hiding down the rabbit hole it kind of stays out in the social and in the communicative space and is used for ends. Yeah, yeah those are all really great points and then to build on it it brings up questions like how do you share developing science within mass while continuing trust but also enabling space that this is a building space like this is still developing and so then it's questions of like you know how do you deliver that message in a way that's absorbable so like one question is well instead of just throwing it over the fence can we create a feedback loop right is the content we deliver have a survey option where people can say what's working with them for what's not what's resonating so we people don't feel like we're just throwing it at them another is to be like you know your active inference cycle what works for you like what is resonating with you like pick that up focus on that like we are different self-actualization the further you get up the pyramid the more individualized the needs are so encouraging people to take what's for them so there's like yeah there's a lot of really interesting questions around the space but you pointed out a really great one and that's like when is science ready to take to people and help them and the space definitely seems like it's reached that it's just a question of how yes and how to include and communicate in the science I think a few pieces of active inference that help a lot first as you pointed out at the very beginning is you said active inference active inference enables us to hold uncertainty it gives us like a handle or a buffer we're talking about uncertainties literally designing systems even really simple ones like a pendulum but we could still approach that and talk about uncertainty and hold up like the mean and the variance together instead of only trying to distill down to one so there's that kind of like unity is plural at minimum two and then statistically that kind of breaks down into like mean and variance and then also the action perception loop it's like undeniable and even if somebody is listening and they're bored or they're agitated or whatever it is by whatever the material is that experience they're having is its prima facia evidence that they are in that action perception loop whereas something that's happening like at a molecular level or at a cosmological level there may have to be some like abstractions required to really understand okay well this is like why when this light turns that color that reflects this very large or very small event occurring and that may be a totally rigorous chain of causation and yet it still is very removed from our direct experience but like whether the person is looking at the microscope or the telescope or just the naked eye it's their sights that they can actually have this inner experience around and so that's kind of a unique doorway that's very fun to explore Yeah, yeah, good Okay I'll read another comment from Mick Thacker in the chat Hi Anna, lovely talk, fascinating I'd love to chat how this would be beneficial to the community of people living with persistent pain and maybe able to help with AI development Yes, I would love to have that conversation as someone who just came out of a health cycle with a lot of chronic pain it was a very lived experience for me and quite frankly impacted this work because I had such sensitivity like I had really small bandwidth for holding discomfort because of the physical discomfort I was in yes I wouldn't say I'm ready to speak to it at a larger level but I would say I think there's a lot in the space and I would love to do a little bit of digging so yeah and then we can always post whatever we come up with Cool I was thinking about the wheel of emotions and then how you emphasize that like we move through them kind of like we have a there's like a ticker or a point in the wheels kind of rotating or moving or changing and then about how even when like walking is painful that is its own message and there's so many ways that can go like into the physical therapy or accessibility or the performance angle but again across that whole continuum those are all people taking steps or trying to and so pulling back to that level of abstraction has that paradox to hold of being like seemingly lifted or different than our experience and yet the more we think about it it just comes to enmesh with our experience and it's just a question of what we attend to I mean one could attend to every single step and like muscle fiber contraction in a movement and that would essentially be a mindfulness practice approach that from another way yeah so yes so I guess I'll be brave and put my toe in the water so I've been exploring this and I don't feel like it's fully developed yet but one of the things that really two key ideas that really resonate with me one is if we pull from people who've been thinking about this from an experiential point of view for generations from Buddhist philosophies you see an acknowledging but not over grabbing so pulling it into the active inference cycle without over emphasizing on it so perhaps making the feelings of pain louder than they are and it's really interesting because I started digging into this from the idea of what is beauty and what is harmony and the systems in the body that respond to harmony and dissonance or beauty and ugliness they are systems within our anatomy that don't contain a switch so I can't say I only want to experience beauty without those systems also handling ugliness there's no way for me to impose that filter as a human being so that's where I start to see the physiology of a human start to align with some of these eastern philosophies and people who've been thinking about this for generations but I don't think that the idea is fully developed yet but I think it'll include both of those Yes, like experiences are not simply good like I talk a lot with my wife about salt, fat, acid, heat we like the cookbook and just the idea and it's like but everything contains heat, I mean molecular motion everything contains protons, acidity so it's like they're all continua and then in one moment you might want something salty but another moment not so nothing more necessarily needs to be filled in than like the framework and then the cookbook and then it's left to the household on that night what to make because to try to brick and mortar more in would reduce the degrees of freedom in maybe someone's on a low salt diet or someone wants more salt or something like that like you can't know so when you have the pillars of the tenants or the kind of distillable principles and then the recipe book with a lot of motifs like here are some bodily positions here are some progressive sequences or whatever it happens to be it's like that's where we jump off in our actual engagements there's no more in principle necessarily to resolve and for something like bodily activity or cooking it kind of is clearer what the ends are of that work but then in like computational neuroscience or in the mathematics of consciousness it kind of like takes off and it just keeps going and yet it also can return back yeah okay I'll just read one comment of the positive comments in the chat Yin Yang Balance wrote good ideas on the differentiation nature of our mind to experience the environment therefore we have to experience both sides of the Yin and Yang beauty and ugly thank you well do you have any questions or thoughts or I mean where do you go or I guess just a moment of gratitude right for this community for being welcomed here to share the thoughts yeah it on a lot of levels I'm very grateful for it and yeah the invitation to collaborate if I can get help something you're working on I'm like touched I'm happy to go both ways and yeah thank you so much for having me here Dan it was awesome and again I think it really compliments a lot of the work in the material so I hope that people enjoy it and looking forward to 76.2 wonderful thanks okay thank you thank you