Onboarding & Introduction (Session 1)

Welcome everyone to the first meeting of the Fundamentals of Active Inference textbook group in 2026. In this first meeting we have already said hello and sort of grounded and created a preliminary connection and we're going to go over the the platform document that's our shared epistemic niche for a few minutes. Address any other general or logistical questions about how we'll work over the coming couple of months of course with updating and surprises along the way. And then we will discuss the introduction chapter as much as we can linearly synchronously and also with an emphasis on how do we write a question in the the platform and that's really going to be like the way that we continue to augment and incrementally share our curiosities and insights is really through the questions that we ask and the ways that we kind of chime in to contribute to each other's questions. So looking at the the platform document on the side it it may be dark mode or maybe in light mode for you. I'm using the dark mode. The top-level page is going to have a kind of link tree with all the information that you might want and if you want something added up to that top level, feel free to go for it. But everything that we're going to do is going to be in this chat room synchronously and in this document asynchronously. So bookmark this document and continue to revisit and enjoy it because it's going to have a ton of awesome material in it. First tab is the meetings tab. This provides information on exactly which topic will be under discussion for that synchronous meeting the date and the time in UTC. Also everyone's been added to the calendar like the overall Google calendar and the specific events. So if you ever have uncertainty about what time zone something is happening in, different time zone shifts happen in different locations or not check your calendar as reference point and what is going to be discussed in that session. It's not required to have read the material before, let alone feel like you have reduced every uncertainty about it. PS that will not happen. Um so feel free to jump in whenever you want to enjoy it live whatever your level of uh readiness or preparation for it is if you've submitted questions ahead or not and also who will be the facilitator during that session and then after I will add a link to the recording. Silvia? Yeah, um is Fraser's the Friday's session at 1:00 or at 2:00 UTC because it seemed to be different from the invitation's time. It should be 1:00 UTC from what I understand but Britain is currently on British summertime which is 1 hour ahead. So maybe maybe somewhere in there. Okay. >> Okay. Okay, no it is I'm going to thank you. It is at Is it at 1:00 because right now RXNFER is at 1:00 on Friday Fraser. The 13:00 UTC. It is yeah so I would currently it is it is at 1:00. We've set it's at 1:00. So and that does conflict with the RXNFER session. >> Should I delete RXNFER session? I think I think that's probably wise. All right. All right. Thank you Silvia great note. I will have just deleted the RXNFER Friday session and move the calendar event to appropriately 13:00. So good call. Yes as as um hopefully all will will see and and co-enact together like changing your mind, changing the world, belief updating is the name of the game. That is the true learning by doing because it's such a lifelong journey to have an analytical grasp of some of these topics even in our AI augmented day and age. So like hopefully that is a a spirit that carries us through and keeps it fun and and dynamic as we fix typos ask questions and like keep on evolving along the way. So check back at the recordings column after the meeting if you ever want to revisit anything. Um next tab is the participants tab. This is one of my favorite figures I guess you could say. This is from the form that people register with. So the x-axis is self-assessed familiarity with active inference. Again whatever that means on a 0 to 100 scale for different people and then a…