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Active Inference

Andrius Kulikauskas is applying to be an Active Inference Institute Research Fellow.

Application form

Active Inference Institute Research Fellow

1. Confirmation that one has read & agreed to the Research Fellows Terms.

2. Research proposal (1-6 pages, excluding citations), which can describe one or more research projects in detail or outline a research direction in more general terms. The proposal should include:

Title

Modeling Subjective Human Experience as an Interplay of Passive, Active and Willful Inference

Abstract (300 words or less)

I want to model the interplay of three levels of awareness by which I think we live: an enactive Passive Inference of actions filtering the past, a predictive Active Inference of conceptions projecting the future, and a cybernetic Willful Inference of equivalences steering the present by balancing Passive Inference and Active Inference and then selecting which to implement. I will look for these three kinds of inference in the interactions of a geometer with an arbitrary triangle. I've chosen the Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers as a historical corpus where I can discern, document, systematize and interpret the limits of our imagination in engaging a triangle. My hypothesis is that for us humans, all systems are basically the same, subject to our ability or inability to interact with them, as when we love our neighbors as ourselves. I expect that understanding our interactions with a model organism - the arbitrary triangle - will yield a vocabulary of basic actions (much like linguistic noun cases), and possible conceptions (triangle centers), and available equivalences (alternate ways to construct the same points). This may translate to a practical understanding of the dynamics of sorting algorithms (Michael Levin's model organisms!), chess, music, poetry, moods, humor, irony, prayers, social norms, natural languages, DNA, proteins, neurotransmitters, biofilms, ant colonies, brains, meaningful experiences, life choices and all else. My success or failure will help clarify how the Free Energy Principle could manifest as cognizance, deliberateness, willfulness. Working with colleagues at Math4Wisdom, Econet, TheoryTranslator, and the Active Inference Institute, I'll also lead an investigatory group and curate online resources of humanity's conceptual frameworks, methods of inference, deepest values, investigatory questions and relationships with truth.

Research question(s) and objectives

My research questions funnel my wish to know everything and apply that knowledge usefully. They examine the limits of my imagination, and currently focus me on the challenge of understanding how I can interact with an arbitrary triangle. In these interactions, I will seek to identify and disentangle three levels of awareness which function within us as Passive Inference, Active Inference and Willful Inference. I will attempt to model their interplay. I will keep the following questions in mind.

How to organize a science of subjective human experience?

• How to validate the methodology for such a science?
• How to foster collaboration on investigations and share endeavors, knowledge bases, and a conceptual language?
• How to connect with researchers working in a wide variety of theoretical frameworks?

What can Active Inference and the Free Energy Principle contribute to such a science?

• Can their functioning in subjective human experience be recognized internally, intuitively, structurally, in terms of introspected contrasts (such as perception vs. action), and not only externally, numerically, in terms of objective measurements?
• Can their ontology contribute to an interlingua across disparate theoretical frameworks?
• Can they help untangle different levels of awareness?

Is it helpful to distinguish within us three minds (levels of awareness)?

• An answering mind that unconsciously knows answers?
• A questioning mind that does not know, thus consciously asks questions?
• An investigating mind that balances the answering mind and the questioning mind, and then decides which one to implement?

Introspectively, intuitively, does it make sense to distinguish within us an enactive Passive Inference filtering the past, a predictive Active Inference projecting the future, and a cybernetic Willful Inference steering the present by balancing Passive Inference and Active Inference and then selecting which to implement?

Can we distinguish and untangle the languages of these three minds?

• Argumentation: How do issues come to matter? Passively optimizing actions to reduce the natural tension in the environment.
• Verbalization: How does meaning arise? Actively creating artifical tension with concepts that guide us to stay, play and learn within safe alternatives.
• Narration: How do events happen? Willfully identifying with a character who conducts themselves during a dramatic shift in the gravity of the tension they are dealing with, as experienced across an underlying rhythm which alternates the creation and relaxation of tension.

Can we understand how these three languages fit together to account for the dynamics of our subjective human experience?

• Can we understand these languages in terms of inference - passive, active, willful?
• Can we develop a model of trilingual interplay that helps us understand and empathize with human beings in general, and with unique personalities, and beings of all kind, and furthermore, every manner of discipline, appreciating their range of possibilities, and learning how to interact with them fully?
• Specifically, as a simplest form of this challenge, can we understand and empathize with an arbitrary triangle, appreciate the range of its possibilities within the actions, constructions and equivalences of triangle geometry, and learn how to interact with it fully?

Can we apply and extend Active Inference to model this interplay?

• Specifically, can we formulate and apply the Free Energy Principle so that it expresses a Willful Inference that balances Passive Inference and Active Inference and selects from them as two options?

Having an example of such a trilingual interplay, can we observe and show that the same trilingual interplay is at work in other domains, such as sorting algorithms, chess, music, math, humor, poetry, natural language... ?

• What insights do these domains add and why?
• Could the interplay with a triangle be introspecting an isolated cortical column?
• What would this tell us about human experience, in general?

In pursuing these questions, I wish to achieve the following objectives.

Understand Active Inference

• Understand and gain hands on experience with Active Inference in model-based analysis in terms of the key ideas, mathematical equations, and computations with ActiveInference.jl
• Study the classic papers that represent the historical development of Active Inference and understand its relationships with other theoretical frameworks. Collect and systematize the ways that Karl Friston figures things out.
• Formulate the Free Energy Principle so that it can express cognizance, deliberateness, willfulness, perhaps as Willful Inference, by which I mean, the self-spun narrative of a Willful Preference when the cost of comparing the difference between the options of Passive Inference and Active Inference is more than the actual difference.

Understand triangle geometry

• Identify a small number of basic constructions and their rules of composition by which they can generate all of the current and future data of the Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers.
• Overview the logic of the equivalences by which the same triangle centers can be generated by different constructions.

Understand subjective human experience as the interplay of three levels of awareness, or alternatively, understand the failings of this approach and discover promising alternatives.

• Illustrate this model in terms of the ways we can interact with an arbitrary triangle.
• Apply this model to other domains, collaborating with others.
• Place this model within a larger theoretical framework, a language of wisdom, such as the Wondrous Wisdom that I have been documenting.

Contribute to Active Inference Institute as an investigatory community where a science of subjective human experience is actively developed.

• Present such research and findings in academic contexts with peer-reviewed publications and presentations.
• Collaborate with researchers both in and out of academia, with established thinkers and independent thinkers, with trained scientists and citizen scientists.
• Participate in Theoretical Neurobiology meetings and Active Inference Institute livestreams.
• Apply the research and findings as at Econet https://www.e-c-o.net for caring about ourselves, each other, our society and our environment.
• Lead a weekly group of investigators of Subjective Human Experience, including introspection, contemplation, meditation, prayer, emotions, moods, fisualization, decision-making, morality and investigation, as part of the Active Inference ecosystem.

Establish knowledge bases, in the Public Domain, preferably collaboratively, which collect:

• Examples of the three minds but also other conceptual frameworks, as at Theory Translator.
• One's deepest value in life, relationship with truth, and investigatory questions, much as here and here, which individuals agree to share.
• Ways of figuring things out, for various disciplines and personalities, and their systematizations.

Significance and impact of the proposed research

The Free Energy Principle has been proposed to have not only broad but possibly universal significance, perhaps even subsuming or merging with the Principle of Maximum Entropy and the Principle of Least Action (or Stationary Action). Universality thereby imposes itself upon mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology and sociology. My research will contribute to clarifying the universality of the Free Energy Principle, I think especially if I succeed in formulating it in terms of Passive Inference, Active Inference and Willful Inference.

Universality is the quality that I have sought in my lifelong research, documenting a language of wisdom, Wondrous Wisdom, by exploring the limits of my imagination, introspecting the ways that I am able to approach an issue. The three minds - answering, questioning, investigating - are a gateway to the conceptual vocabulary that I have worked on all my life. I wish for this work to be meaningful not simply to me but also to others. This depends on it finding application.

Suppose that we can comprehensively understand and intuit the possibilities of an arbitrary triangle. Neurologically, there may be a cortical column devoted to the notion of an arbitrary triangle, and it may perhaps stand in for any concept to which a cortical column is devoted to. The neurology may encode a universal metaphysics by which we interact with a concept or an individual or any being. By focusing on the simple, pure, definite case of the arbitrary triangle ABC, we may discover the general pattern. This may give clues, for example, on the nature of the six layers of the cortical columns.

A new and comprehensive understanding of triangle geometry will be significant for all of pure mathematics because triangles are fundamental for all kinds of geometry and geometry is where algebra and analysis come together. If the dynamics can be observed in other domains, then there may be no end to the possible application for understanding disciplines or interacting with beings from their own natural point of view. This encourages us to discover a universal language of love by which we can respect, tolerate, embrace, hear out, serve and support others. We can act, infer, serve as peacemakers, and more broadly, as agents of universal harmony.

Approach and research methods

I have personally conducted hundreds of philosophical investigations. I choose an existential question, introspect phenomenological data, systematize that structurally, and frame that pragmatically to distill a conceptual language of absolute truth.

In 2017, at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, I taught philosophy. Rather than teach the history of philosophy, I took the opportunity to teach my students how to ask a question they cared about and arrive at an answer. Given one's question, the simplest method is to ask a related question for gathering relevant subjective data - typically 20 or 30 examples may suffice - and then group similar examples, contrast the groups, distill the contrasts, and arrive at a comprehensive structure of all that is humanly possible. The resulting structure is an absolute truth that partly or completely answers the question asked. Performing this repeatedly makes for a conceptual map of the perspectives that the human mind is able to take. My wish is to nurture an investigatory community that would show the fruitfulness of this approach. I wish for a science of subjective human experience.

In 1988, on the basis of the static structures that I had documented, I hypothesized that human experience could be expressed in terms of three conceptual languages: argumentation by which issues come to matter, verbalization by which meaning arises, and narration by which events happen. As an independent scholar at Vilnius University in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, I analyzed narration because I knew a body of data that I could study to illuminate it: Lithuanian folk tales. I soon realized that in order to keep our attention the stories had to alternate between creating and relaxing tension. We empathize with the victim of the tension, who as the story progresses is unfolded and then folded back up. But the content of the story is given by the tone of voice that creates the tension, whether it is forcing, commanding, explaining or caring. This tone of voice is constant at the beginning of a story, and a different tone of voice but likewise constant at the end of the story. Thus the Cinderella story starts with commanding and ends with explaining, which determines the content. There are seven kinds of stories. Today, AI could apply this theory.

In order to work out the languages of argumentation and verbalization, I needed an appropriate body of data. I also needed a better sense of the theoretical context. In 2012, I read parts of Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and recognized that his System 1 and System 2 accord, in my philosophy, with adding a perspective or adding a perspective on a perspective. There should furthermore be a System 3, full fledged consciousness, adding a perspective upon a perspective on a perspective. In developing Math 4 Wisdom, my supportive investigatory community, I grew to appreciate the centrality of the three minds.

In 2024, Daniel Friedman discovered Math 4 Wisdom through my YouTube videos. He set up a Coda for Math 4 Wisdom. We meet weekly and I became interested in Active Inference. I think of it as describing the relationship between the answering mind, the unconscious, enmeshed in the world, speaking for it with 100 billion neurons, and the questioning mind, the conscious, divorced from the world, thus modeling it with 100 thousand black boxes, which is to say, concepts. I wonder how their relationship, regulated by the Free Energy Principle, could be understood in terms of an investigatory mind. Presumably, it plays with some ambiguity here.

I read the Active Inference textbook and studied it with Cohorts 7 and 8. For me, the key observation is that in an action-perception loop, when our model is wrong, we can update our model or we can update the world. I still need to understand how the Free Energy Principle implements this mathematically and thermodynamically, and I need to code some projects to make sense of this. Currently, I am writing a proposal for Peter Thestrup Waade to receive EU funding for his Julia software package ActiveInference.jl If we win this or other funding, then I will write a step-by-step tutorial on model-based analysis which distills for me and others Karl Friston's vision for how we set up and invert and establish what generative models are at work based on the data we have. I will also set up a project archive for sharing illustrative examples of modeling projects. This will prepare me for coding my own models.

In wondering what to code with Active Inference, I returned to my search for the three languages. I considered the role played by tension. Passive Inference (the answering mind) presupposes tension in the environment and simply optimizes the relaxation of tension as when implementing architect Christopher Alexander's patterns. Whereas Active Inference (the questioning mind) creates artificial tension to keep us safe from real trouble. Together they can create and relax tension, yielding the unit of tension in a narrative. Alexander's patterns can be deliberately composed by selecting from the pattern language to build, for example, a home. As with William James's definition of intelligence, one can choose from different paths to achieve the same end.

The three minds are implicit in Karl Friston's... in critique by... may simply be a matter of setting to zero the relevant terms for free energy...

What body of data could I study to flesh this out? What would fully capture the richness of human experience, yet be as simple as possible, and most clearly defined? Triangle geometry is a profoundly rich and fundamental area of mathematics, a meeting place for algebra and analysis, cultivated over thousands of years, though it be restricted to three points on a plane. The facts of triangle geometry can be understood in terms of triangle centers, the specific points that can be constructed given an arbitrary triangle ABC. The Ancient Greeks knew of four such centers: incenter, centroid, circumcenter, orthocenter. Hundreds more were noted in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Encyclopedia of Triangle Centers https://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/encyclopedia/etc.html lists more than 60,000 triangle centers. It also has a glossary of 64 terms.

I will be studying roughly 50 of the most elementary triangle centers. Here are my notes so far: https://www.math4wisdom.com/wiki/Research/TriangleCenters I am looking for basic actions and the purposes they serve. We can draw a circle around a triangle and shrink the circle until it touches all three vertices. This describes the size of the triangle. We can then place a circle inside the triangle and make that circle as large as possible. This adds information about the shape of the triangle. We can bisect each side, and draw medians from the midpoints to the opposite vertices, and those median will concur in a single point. We can drop altitudes from vertices to opposing sides and they will concur. Is there a limited number of basic actions which generate all of the rest?

In particular, based on my structural considerations, I am looking for 6 basic actions that accord with 6 basic linguistic noun cases, or semantically, with the 6 levels of Kiparsky's hierarchy. An agent acts for a beneficiary in the context of a goal/experience. Here the will acts directly and the tension is natural, as by an environment upon a subject. This same relationship can hold indirectly, from a metalevel, in the reverse direction, so that the will acts indirectly, through artificial tension, as by a subject upon its environment: An instrument acts on a patient/theme in the context of a location. The answering mind is modeling the three minds directly, and the questioning mind is modeling them indirectly. I will try to identify each basic action and decipher their purposes. Together I expect the 6 actions will comprehensively define what it means to be an arbitrary triangle.

Note that these actions are continuous and it matters that they be executed properly. But they generate discrete points, such as the center of a circle, which can be taken as discrete concepts by which meaning arises. The actions generate a rich language of points, the possible Markov states in a generative model. Furthermore, we can arrive at the same point by different combinations of actions. These equivalences are statements in triangle geometry. Consequentially, the investigatory mind can choose which statements to construct, and how to construct them, and where to rely on the continuous actions, and where to rely on the conceptual points. This is what I wish to model.

I expect to gain key insights by systematizing the ways of figuring things out in triangle geometry. I have arrived at the same 24-fold pattern in systematizing the epistemologies of mathematics, physics, biology, neuroscience, sociology, Gamestorming, chess, and also individuals - Jere Northrop, Franz Nahrada, Jesus and the Gaon of Vilna. The central method establishes the ideal observer: in math, we describe the symmetry group; in physics, we isolate the system; in biology, we transform an environment by inserting a life form; in neuroscience, we link in time neural processes and outcomes. Twelve methods set up the system we study, and twelve methods examine it. Thus in biology, we enter by befriending life. For biological answers, we circumscribe what is alive by considering it in situ, in vitro, in vivo and by returning it to nature. For biological questions, we work out the conditions for it to be observable, fail, maintain itself, and transcend itself (as with regeneration or reproduction, defining success). We link these strands together with a learning three-cycle of selecting a model organism, developing standard traits, and using it to transform human endeavors (agriculture and medicine). This enables us to purposefully insert an organism into an environment, thus study it as part of a biological system. We can consider whether (contaminating genes) deviate, what (interrelated tissues) deviate, how (inheriting beings) deviate and why (evolving environments) deviate and thereby identify the purposes of traits. These 4 levels make for 6 pairs which visualize the success of traits: evolution of divergence, atlas of anatomy, handbook of digestion, chronicle of domination, catalogue of solutions, loop of consequences. Together these define life as a system for managing traits for success (transcendence, regeneration, reproduction). We sum up and leave biology by mathematically modeling and calculating the possibilities, as with Active Inference.

Similarly, the epistemology of triangle geometry will help me understand the world of an arbitrary triangle. I can empathize with Nagel's bat by systematizing the ways it figures things out, and likewise, I can empathize with Daniel's ant colony. On the one hand, ants track their rates of encounter with each other, which yields liquid streams of ants permeating their surroundings out and about. On the other hand, ants dab pheromones on each other's foreheads, which sends semiotic messages to the queen's cohort deep within the sterile nest. What could regulate the relationship between the immersive liquid mind and the digital semiotic mind? I imagine it is the nest maintainers who can manipulate the entrances of the brainlike nest so as to play with the tipping point as to whether the colony wages war or maintains peace, whether it expects good weather or bad, whether it will move the nest or trigger reproduction. But for studying our capacity for empathy, I think the easiest, simplest, clearest of all is to empathize with an arbitrary triangle.

Theoretically, alongside my study of triangle geometry, I will be variously investigating the three minds and the conceptual frameworks they are situated amongst, the language of wisdom I call Wondrous Wisdom. At Theory Translator, https://www.theorytranslator.com, with the help of my colleagues, I have curated 291 examples of the three minds. I am grouping these examples into dozens of recurring patterns, and teasing out the logic by which the more basic patterns ground all the others. The three minds are fundamental to my theory of emotions, which is based on expectations, and also the line between our selves we know and our world we don't, the line between sadness and surprise, contentment and excitement, disgust and fright, which should be significant for Active Inference. Transforming that line yields a geometry of moods, and those Moebius transformations can be understood as mapping a sphere to a sphere, but similarly, as enriching a triangle. The three minds are evident in visualizations, where the answering mind presents a structure (sequence, hierarchy or network) which the questioning mind restructures with a different structure (sequence, hierarchy or network), making for six visualizations, each with a gap that is a source of paradox. The three minds act on eight mental contexts, divisions of everything, which I have documented and which I am modeling with eightfold real Bott periodicity and three quantum symmetries. I am integrating work from decades thinking about the 3 languages, 45 academic presentations listed in my CV, and thousand of pages of notes in my wiki in Lithuanian. This should all give key insights that I believe will help me decipher triangle geometry.

When I have figured out how to look at triangle geometry, and worked out the dynamics, then I think it should be straightforward for me to code this in ActiveInference.jl, given my programming experience. I expect that the existing Active Inference models will get me far along. But I suppose that I will have to extend these models to illustrate the investigatory mind. I will need to select and craft aspects to visualize which would be most illustrative of the dynamics. I imagine that this may be of interest to students and teachers of triangle geometry.

I will express my findings in the language of Active Inference, consulting with experienced researchers. I will study Karl Friston's classic papers and sketch out his epistemological portrait, how he personally figures things out, perhaps revealing the 24 ways I have described.

If I am successful, then it will be exciting to see if the same dynamics can be observed in other domains. In high school, I became a chess master, and I think chessplayers would be interested what insights these dynamics would yield. Another discrete domain is that of the sorting algorithms which interest Michael Levin. The domains that I choose will very much depend on the collaborators who would like to work with me, perhaps in the humanities or perhaps in psychiatry. I think that it would be very exciting and perhaps fruitful and spectacular to try to decipher the dynamics of neurotransmitters, taken as a whole. But perhaps most important is to explore how the interplay of the three languages could help communicate with interested people. We could learn to systematize their personal ways of figure things out, and I hope study that with their help to discover the basic actions which define their unique inner lives and are the most loving ways to interact with them. I expect this would connected with their deepest value in life - I have collected answers from 800 people and it becomes apparent they are all different - and with their relationship with truth, which is closely linked. The ultimate goal is a science of love and its application as a dynamic for lovingly interacting with others, universally and yet uniquely, tuning into them absolutely.

If I fail, then at least I hope to bring clarity to my vision and to our reality.

I realize from the letters of recommendations which I share with you that even my most supportive friends do not claim to understand me and my Wondrous Wisdom. I am "neurodiverse" in the way I have chosen to live by truth, rooting out my prejudices and my preconceptions, documenting the limits of my abstract investigatory mind, like a blind man mapping out the walls of his prison, the chambers and the passageways. I have designed my investigation of triangle geometry to complete my research into the dynamics of human experience. I believe that this can yield practical results which will motivate others to reverse engineer what I have done or simply make an effort to understand me. I believe that Wondrous Wisdom is compatible with Active Inference, and indeed embraces it and extends it in terms of Passive Inference, Active Inference and Willful Inference, if that holds up, as we will learn. My friendship with Daniel and my participation at the Theoretical Neurobiology meetings make me feel that I and my contributions are welcome here. I think that this speaks to the people that the ideas of Active Inference attract as a framework for free will, where updating our model and updating our world are both available. I simply think that we can take that a step further and model the will and the choice which inhabit that ambiguity.

Alignment with the Active Inference Institute’s mission

As I study Active Inference, I will contribute to its accessibility. Certainly, this will be true if I am funded to create a tutorial, "The ABCs of Active Inference", and organize a project archive. Aside from that, I think that by collecting and systematizing the ways that Karl Friston figures things out, based on his papers and any conversations we may have, and making that available as a publication, I will present a new window onto the Active Inference framework. I aspire to model the dynamics of triangle geometry and thereby provide novel illustrations of Active Inference.

My consideration of Active Inference in terms of three minds (answering, questioning, investigating) speaks directly to its reconciling three theoretical traditions (enactive, predictive, cybernetic) as noted in Chapter 3.7 of the Active Inference textbook. I hope to contribute rigor in determining how the Free Energy Principle could be understood to relate Passive Inference, Active Inference and Willful Inference conceptually, mathematically and practically. I will learn from and contribute to the Active Inference ontology.

In curating the Theory Translator, which has 290 examples illustrating the three minds, I have already included several entries that highlight Karl Friston and Active Inference. I look to Active Inference as a lingua franca which, through this Theory Translator, can show the connections between many contemporary frameworks in consciousness studies, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, psychiatry and other domains. This contributes to the applicability of Active Inference and if my research in the dynamics of experience is successful, then all the more so the insights will carry over to other domains. It may also help me connect with Active Inference thinkers such as Michael Levin, Chris Fields, Shannon Dobson, Joscha Bach, Iain McGilchrist and many others.

I am active with Jere Northrop in cultivating a wider investigatory community, Econet, caring for ourselves, our society, our environment, and we see the relevance of Active Inference and artificial intelligence in coordinating rural entrepreneurs in bioregions, as with biofirms.

Anticipated measurements (outcomes and deliverables)

Data collection

• A description of perhaps 50 triangle centers in terms of the one or more procedures by which they are created, the ways they are related and the concepts they ground.
• A distillation of the key steps, ideas, actions in proofs of perhaps 100 statements, which may typically demonstrate the equivalence of different constructions.
• A classification of the latter 100 examples in terms of the associated ways of figuring out their proofs.

Distillation

• A systematization of the ways of figuring things out in triangle geometry.
• A list of basic actions and rules of composition that generate the constructions I considered.
• An explanation, supported by evidence, that this suffices for generating the present and future entries of the Encyclopedia.
• A metaphysical interpretation of these actions and rules and their connection, if any, with the three minds and Wondrous Wisdom.
• A mathematical model in the language of the Free Energy Principle.
• A systematization of the ways Karl Friston figures things out.

Presentation

• An interpretation of the dynamics of constructions in terms of Active Inference and, I presume, Passive Inference and Willful Inference.
• One or more computer models illustrating these constructions in terms of Passive, Active and Willful Inference.
• Active Inference Institute livestream presentations of my work-in-progress at various stages.
• Presentation at one or more Theoretical Neurobiology meetings.
• Online presentations to various audiences such as researchers of geometry, math education, cognitive science, consciousness studies, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, biology and any potential collaborators.
• Consultations with Active Inference champions to decide where best to publish this and fruitfully pursue this further.
• Academic publication in one or more journals for interested audiences.

Extension

• Collaborations with others to look for analogous dynamics in other domains.
• Collaboration on the Theory Translator as a shared resource of examples of the three minds and other conceptual frameworks.
• Collaboration on the collection and systematization of ways of figuring things out in various disciplines and by various personalities.
• Collaboration on collecting, from interested individuals, their deepest values in life, investigatory questions and relationships with truth.
• A collection of essays on the three minds and other conceptual frameworks of Wondrous Wisdom at the Theory Translator.
• Consultations with Active Inference leaders on how to present and publish earlier results of Wondrous Wisdom and fund future research.
• Informal organization of researchers of subjective human experience who would like to work together at the Active Inference Institute, at Econet, in academia and outside of it.

Timeline and milestones

• 6 months: Analyze the first 50 triangle centers in terms of actions, concepts and equivalences. Systematize the ways of figuring things out in triangle geometry. Consult with experts in triangle geometry.
• 6 months: Think through this data in terms of three languages: how do the actions matter, how does meaning arise in the concepts, and given the equivalences, how do particular constructions happen?
• 6 months: Construct models with ActiveInference.jl that illustrate the interplay of Passive Inference, Active Inference and Willful Inference in triangle geometry.
• 6 months: Look for this same interplay in two or three other domains and model it with ActiveInference.jl

People and institutions involved

I am able to conduct this investigation by myself but will be inviting collaborators all along the way. I lead my own investigatory community, Math 4 Wisdom, https://www.math4wisdom.com , and am active at the Active Inference Institute, including the Discord server and the Theoretical Neurobiology meetings.

I lead my own investigatory group that meets by zoom on Wednesdays. We talk about our investigations and I relate them to Wondrous Wisdom. Currently attending are Daniel Friedman, Marcus Petz, Bill Pahl and Ryan Buchanan. I am applying for our group to be included in the Active Inference ecosystem under the title "Modeling Subjective Human Experience".

Once a week I meet with John Harland to talk about math, physics and philosophy, notably Bott periodicity and quantum symmetries, as in my paper "An Allegory..." This provides a grounding of the three minds in pure mathematics and related physics. I meet once a month in Vilnius with Thomas Gajdosik and sometimes the three of us meet by zoom. I have published 100 Math 4 Wisdom videos, have 1,200 YouTube subscribers, and am always reaching out to potential collaborators. There may well be an audience for triangle geometry.

Once a week I meet with Jere Northrop of TimberFish Technologies to talk about Econet https://www.e-c-o.net He funded my theoretical research for six months and hopes to continue in the future when he is able. Together we talk about the significance of language and communication for interacting with our ecosystems. With the Active Inference Institute, we would gladly develop further our vision for biofirms, as in my draft proposal, which I wrote in response to Matthew Moroney's question: What can we implement immediately? which he asked at the Roundtable on Implications of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Active Inference Agentic Architectures organized by John Clippinger of First Principles First as part of the 2024 Applied Active Inference Symposium.

I am very happy that the Active Inference Institute is a warm, friendly, bright, happy, inclusive fellowship, enjoying open access and open source, inspiring creativity, learning and sharing. As a Research Fellow, I would feel confirmed, happy to participate and include others. I am delighted by the positivity I have felt from Daniel, Karl, Peter and the passion I feel in the presenters of the livestreams. I also feel that Active Inference offers connections to pioneers in countless disciplines. I would like to feel a member of the Active Inference tribe. I would be glad to think of the Active Inference Institute as my incubator where I can grow as I find acceptance in academia yet center myself in a broader investigatory culture which I help foster.

I myself am looking for income or work to fund my research. In 2024, I authored a proposal to the Templeton Foundation, Active Inference of Absolute Truth, which the Active Inference Institute submitted but it was not selected. (I noted that Active Inference deals with the entire scale of uncertainty, which includes absolute truth at one end!) As a Research Fellow, I will apply for funding with confidence that my efforts are appreciated by those who value the Active Inference framework. In particular, I intend to apply for funding from the California Institute for Machine Consciousness.

Any dependencies or contingencies that might affect progress

These last few years I have had ample time for research, living off savings, donations and sporadic part-time work. Currently, I am looking for income, funding or simply temporary part-time work. My needs here in Lithuania are rather modest, about 1,000 euros per month. I am optimistic that I will have time for this research project. If I need to take a full time job, perhaps moving to another country, then I will likely have to postpone this research in the meanwhile.

Here in Lithuania, my parents are in rather good health. But they are in their eighties, and if they should need my help, then that could impinge on my research.

My research project is very ambitious. I attach my account of some of my comparable achievements which give me confidence.

My own motivation is a key factor. I have waited decades to be able to study this dynamics, to have a minimal sense of its theoretical context, which I think is given by the way the three minds relax and/or create tension, and to have an illuminating data set, which I believe the triangle centers to be. I am excited to pursue this but especially in the context of the Active Inference Institute. I look forward to connecting this with the mathematics of Active Inference, the software library ActiveInference.jl and the interests of the Active Inference community.

One concern is that the facts about triangle geometry may be so rich that there is no way for me to get a handle on them, no way to discover a basic set of actions to generate all of those facts. Perhaps rather we are dealing with an infinite set of cracks, much as in number theory where the prime numbers can be thought of as the cracks that are left over when we discard all the multiples. This would be a negative result yet meaningful as such. Is it humanly possible or not to know everything about an arbitrary triangle? I suppose also that it is a matter of the constraints that are presupposed and that the Encyclopedia will reflect as part of a cultural history. So this is partly a study of definition, cultural and otherwise.

Another concern is whether I can make metaphysical sense of any set of basic actions that I discover. I have a vast collection of conceptual frameworks to draw on and I am apt at recognizing and making sense of new ones. In particular, I think I will make progress by considering the purpose that each action serves, and how their purposes may fit together. Even if I get stuck at this point, I will have learned a lot, and I can proceed by studying a different domain.

I can wonder if I personally will fit in the Active Inference community. In my experience, this is an inclusive community, where I am welcome and others are friendly and I want to be likewise. I think Wondrous Wisdom, which I work on, is compatible with Active Inference. Could my thinking be an existential threat for the Active Inference community or a transformational opportunity or one of many self-checks? In my understanding, Active Inference models truth seeking, comes from Karl Friston as a truth seeker and attracts truth seekers, including me.

I may face challenges in being published. I believe that with mentoring from the Active Inference Institute, I will find ways of presenting my findings to interested audiences.

Cited references (not counted in page limit)

In the research proposal, please clearly address:

• Motivation for proposed work and for applying for a fellowship
• Describe previous engagements/interactions with the Institute
• Describe Institute programs or activities of particular interest and/or that you intend to participate in or facilitate.

3. Curriculum vitae

4. One to Three letters of recommendation (submitted in application packet, or sent separately to blanket@activeinference.institute)

5. Up to five representative publications or products

• "An Allegory..."
• A Geometry of Moods
• Visualization...
• Minciu Sodas
• Pyramid of Peace

Application questions and completed packets should be sent to blanket@activeinference.institute with [RESEARCH FELLOWS] in the Subject line. Please include all application components as separate PDF or document files attached to your email.