Textbook Group meeting for Parr, Pezzulo, Friston 2022 .

all right hello cohort 7 thank you everyone for all the introductions and and saying hello this is our first meeting so we've just all introduce ourselves and now we'll talk a little bit about chapter one slash anything active inference related kind of funneling into the textbook anything about the positioning of the textbook overall the two years since the publication and any topics that people are like excited about to explore in that third week which will give us like a little rest from the Rhythm otherwise um but let's go to chapter one and just like where does anyone want to begin what's a any whether it's a quote or section from chapter one or it's just something about their approach to active inference or it's a it's a general question uh that they have where where would anyone like to begin I'd like to ask a oh yes please please yeah so um um there's a statement on page five saying that active evence as a normative approach to understand brain and mind can you explain to me what normative approach means great great question I was wondering the same thing yeah yeah this is one of this is a this is a very important question I I I'm just going to where I I knew that the question had been asked but um Ali or anyone does anyone want to give a thought what what does normative mean when we're talking about active inference and a normative theoretical perspective yes ali uh well yeah there's an explanation for the use of this term normative in the notes and specifically on page um 267 I guess uh so the use of this term uh differs a little bit from its normal usage for example in philosophy literature or some in some other discourse uh so here the term normative basically refers to uh the way active inference modeling um somehow uh works works according to some evaluative standards so uh more precisely uh in active inference we have uh a specific parameter say surprisal or free energy which uh will get familiar uh more extensively in the uh coming chapters but uh there's this parameter around which all the other elements are evaluated uh and manipulated and modeled and so on so the word normative here actually refers to uh the framework of uh this Theory um and um it it's not uh this is at least it's not exactly used in the same meaning as used in for example uh in ethics or in some I don't know in other usage it's used in a in a rather technical way here so yeah thank you Ali yeah I added a link here to the social sciences course from last year and AVL and Ma work and Ben and ren too is discussing the social normativity social constraints and so that kind of like ought versus is and like what one ought or normed to do as Ali mentioned mentioned um but but it but it's we've explored that from some other directions too like to what extent does this outline how one ought to model Michael sure um yeah it is moving on to a different subject [Music] um uh I was kind of wondering uh so the agents or entities uh often have like a sort of highest preference with prior um I'm wondering if theoretically Andor practically I suppose these policies are always kind of externally artificially injected as like sort of vacines or something like uh Fine Food say or if Act of inference is I guess I don't know if the word self-consistent um but if it these priors manifest automatically um by the I suppose perhaps uh notion of minimizing surprise or the uh the the bias priors are artificially injected every time yeah this is a this is a great question anyone have a thought on on it well normative even in this discussion is sometimes used in a very strong sense the core body temperature of a mammal has to be between a certain minimum and a certain maximum or that animal will stop moving that animal will die you have to have a certain amount of oxygen or you will stop moving and die uh there are some less violent impositions for instance anyone walking in public in a US city has to wear clothes and if you don't you will be taken away and therefore…