Hey coach, welcome back to the channel. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to stay up to date with all the content we put out. Now, what I wanna talk about today is I wanna talk about how to avoid burnout with your training business. Now, something that's a real common occurrence with a lot of coaches that we work with is it gets to a point that they're doing too many sessions per week. Now, when you're doing too many sessions per week, it's gonna get to the point where ultimately you get burnout, you get tired, you get fatigued, and you don't want to continue training clients. So, I wanna show you what I did when I first started my business and what I did in order to transition and avoid that common burnout that a lot of trainers get. So, when I was doing one-on-one training with my business, it got to a point where I was doing up to 20 to 25 sessions per week. My weekends were fully booked. It was literally, I was out in the field from 9 a.m. all the way through to 5 p.m. and it was just back-to-back sessions. I skipped lunch, so I didn't even have time for lunch. It was just literally, it was back-to-back. Now, I did that through a long period of time. So, I remember I was doing that kind of routine for two years and a half until we got to the point where I said to myself, I can't continue to do this because if I do, I'm gonna start to hate what I'm doing. But at the time, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what systems to put within the business. I didn't know how to structure the business in a way where I don't have to train so many clients for so many hours during the week. So, what I did in order to avoid this is I sat down and I made a really big decision and I said, I'm gonna stop offering one-on-one training. Now, what happened is once I stopped offering one-to-one training is I moved everything into groups. So, I was doing 20 to 25 one-on-one sessions per week and suddenly that went down to three group sessions. So, when I had three groups that I was working with, I had about six to 10 kids per group and all my training was on one day. So, I went from 20 to 25 hours of one-on-one sessions per week to three hours of group sessions in one day. Right, now, imagine how much more time I had to market my business, to speak to more parents, to make the business better, okay? And just simply to work on the business rather than in the business, okay? Because any new client I was getting in because all I was offering was one-on-one training, that meant I had to add an hour more extra of work into my work schedule. Right, and it got to a point where it became ridiculous, right? I didn't have any time to spend with my family, I didn't have any time to do things that I wanted to do away from work. I was literally on the field every single day, okay? And it got to a point where I started kind of hating what I was doing because I thought to myself, right, this must be the norm, this must be the way to do it. This is what I need to do in order to be successful. But then once I made that transition from 20 to 25 hours to only three, and I started to work with three groups of six to 10 players, I realized that all I needed to do now was just continue to add and build the groups I had and it wasn't adding any more time during the week into my schedule. So I could do all my training for the week, I could do it in one day and that was it, okay? And what started to happen is I started to feel a lot more energetic. My business actually started to grow more because I was able to market, I was able to sell, I was able to speak to more parents, I had more time to get on sales calls. So I was able to add a lot more business into my groups. And obviously with time my group started to grow. And what I did then was because there was a lot of demand, I then created teams within my business, right? Cause a lot of parents were then reaching out to me as the group started to grow. And they were like, is there any chance you guys are gonna be starting teams? So because there was a demand for it, I then went forward and I implemented and I created a team for one of the groups, right? So I continued, I had a team, but I also did the group training. So ultimately everything I do now with my business is all structured in a way where I'm doing things in groups, right? I've stepped away from the one-on-one training and that's not because I don't like it and that's not because I don't see the value in it, but it's because I know that my time is very valuable and I don't wanna be on the field for longer during the week, right? I don't want my work scheduled to continue to grow. So I know that, right? If I've got groups, I can just continue to add clients into those groups and the business will grow, which means that leaves me more time to improve my website, to do the marketing, to create videos, create content, speak to more parents, drive more traffic towards what we're doing and just provide a better service. When I was doing one-on-one sessions and I was doing 20 to 25 per week, I had no time for none of that, right? I couldn't update the website because when I got home after training, I was too tired, right? I was flat out, I was tired, I was exhausted and ultimately, I didn't wanna do any of that, right? I didn't wanna get on a sales call with parents. I didn't want to update my website. I didn't wanna improve the product, okay? Because I was just exhausted, right? So if you're going through something similar, right? Remember that there is a solution, okay? And my solution was I went from one-on-one training to offering only group trainings. So at the moment, I do group trainings during the week and I also offer camps on the holidays. So when kids are out of school, we run camps and ultimately everything is done in groups. If a parent reaches out to me to do one-on-one training, I will offer it, but it's a very high premium type of service, okay? And that's because I value my time and I know that what one-on-one training requires. It requires a lot more time out on the field. It requires a lot more personal attention, a lot more planning and it's something that, yes, I'll offer it, but if you're serious and you wanna work with me, then it's gonna be a higher type of service than if you were to join the groups and everything's a lot more streamlined that way, okay?  When you go into groups, your groups grow, right? And you work with more clients, which equals more revenue into your business, but it limits the amount of time you work on the field, okay? Because you can do all your training in one day and your business can grow more and more, okay? So if you want more help, reach out to me, there's two ways you can do that. Visit, accordingly, link in the description of this video. You can book a free 15 to 20 minute call with me or if you wanna just send me an email, you can do that to makemoneycoachingsportsatgmail.com. Okay, thank you for watching and I'll see you on the next video.


As far as trademarks are concerned, as I think we've discussed in the past, trademarks are a leading indicator of what is happening in the economy. And historically, we know that trademarks started, the number of trademarks registered around the world started to decline actually back halfway through 2007. So it was a very early indicator of some of the things that happened in 2008. And last year, of course, was the year in which the greatest effect was filled on trademarks. Of course, trademarks are applied for new products or for new companies. And so when, in times of economic depression, of course, the number of trademarks declined significantly, the number of trademarks applications declined significantly. What we saw then last year, and you'll see this in the first paragraph of the press release, is that the number of international applications, or applications for international registrations of trademarks, declined by 16%. That's a very significant number, a very significant amount. And the second thing I would say, besides the overall decline, is let's look at what happened in particular countries. And when you look at what happened in particular countries, I refer you in particular here to page two, the second complete paragraph. And you will see where the biggest declines occurred, Czech Republic 34%, Sweden 34%, Italy 32%, and so on, in that paragraph, going down to the United States, minus 13%. And the Russian Federation minus 10%. So significant declines across all of those countries. Let me just explain one thing, if I may. When you're in Europe, you can apply for a national trademark, or you can apply for a regional, a community trademark. So we have given you, you will see now figures, figures for the European Union, which means applicants who are coming through the European regional system. And we've given you figures for individual European countries, which means applicants coming through the national European system. So there's a little distortion in the figures. And when we say that Sweden is, for example, down 34%, it's not just the economy, it's also a gradual transition to the users using the regional system as opposed to the national system as well. I'm sorry for that complication. But the general storyline is very clear, European applications significantly down. And it also explains why, for example, the EU, we say, we say experience a 3.1% increase. That's a shift in system use rather than a shift as a reflecting economic conditions. So European applications significantly down, US significantly down 13%. You see in the very next paragraph, who's up? And up is the Republic of Korea, 33%, Singapore 20%, Croatia and Hungary. Japan also 2.7%. And so Japan is an interesting, again an interesting case because you may recall that with respect to international patent applications, there was also a rise last year from Japan despite the extremely difficult economic conditions in Japan. So it's once again an indication of how much emphasis is placed on innovation by Japan and Japanese industry and companies. Other things that I'll just point out to you, which may be of interest to you, very briefly, if you want to know which companies are using the system, then the last paragraph on the foot of page 2 will show you who the largest filers were in 2009, Novartis, Little, Henkel and so on, Chinese medical company. Then I think let me take you to the middle of the third of the way down page 3 where we have a little section on top designated countries. Okay, let me just explain that. When you file an international registration, it's based on a national application somewhere or registration. And then you say which countries you would like to have protection in. So they are the designated countries. And that is obviously, the statistics with respect to those are obviously of interest because they show where people are interested in doing, in which markets people are interested in doing business. And we see that there was a decline in the number of designations, but once again China was the country that was most designated, meaning that when people apply for trademarks and they want coverage around the world, they always, or not always, but they often, most frequently, go to China. And China is the most designated place where they seek protection. Okay, I think the only other thing that I will say and then I will stop talking is on page 4, I just draw your attention to the fact that there are over half a million international trademark registrations in force. That's the second full paragraph on page 4, 515,000 active international registrations on the Madrid register. So that's a very significant number. And then you have in the annexes the statistics to support those things that I have been talking about, the number of applications, which countries and so forth. Okay, thank you very much.


Dragon Ball the Breakers, you know it, you love it, and oh my goodness, nobody is playing it. Quick, pull the lever! Wow, y-you know, I actually can't believe that work. That's right, the Ginyu Force has finally released in Dragon Ball the Breakers, and it seems to be kind of bringing the player base back. Even though it's still well under a thousand players, I wanted to jump back in and see if the Ginyu Force is really hype enough to bring the game back. If you like videos on Dragon Ball games, definitely make sure to leave a like and subscribe, but with that said, let's see what the Ginyu Force is all about. All right, so here we are. We're starting practice. Ginyu's finally out. I've been missing Breakers. It feels like it's been, I'd say, at least seven months. Oh, I was like, why am I still? I was about to lose it. Wait, where's Ginyu? Oh, why'd they got Goldo up here, bro? Look at him, though. Look at my guy. Four eyes because he sees everything. Nothing gets past him. All right, Frosty Drake in chat with Goldo's a baddie. He's entirely alone on that one. Yeah, look at the, we got the whole Ginyu Force posed up. That's kind of sick. All right, I'm sitting up straight because even though I have no experience on this character, I'm about to get a win. Oh, what's my intro look like? Do I land in the Saiyan pod? Let me land in a pod. Oh, this is even better. Hype me up.  You can't hate it. What are my special abilities? What are my special abilities? It looks like LB does something.  Is there a person in there?  I'm Goldo from the Ginyu Force. Oh my God, he's kind of, he's kind of ruthless.  Surely this guy. Oh, what are you doing down there? Goldo freeze. Goldo, is that a person or is that a fish?  I got you for three minutes. Oh, I froze time on him. That was sick. Or at least I think I did. I'm not sure what my ability was. They thought they got Hyped from the Goldo Meister. I just need one more NPC or anything. There's no, oh thank God. Where is everybody, bro? They're going to kill me.  Who comes in next? Raccoon? Hey, oh! Come on. It's my turn to play. Tch, finished already?   I like the confidence. Oh, why am I posed like that? Flex. Pose on him. That's it. I just have to hold this pose. Boom! All right, beautiful. All right, so it looks like they got D. They probably set it up. I feel like, what is that? Who set that? What is that?  Is that just a dragon ball? Am I getting baited? Am I about to get jumped? Who left this here? All right, well, I'll take it. Shit was shining. Wait, is that will be just a dash? Oh, the clap was he. Oh, looky, looky, we are here. The name's Raccoon. Oh, hit him with a little bit of that. Don't even try that. What? How do you have that power?  What was that? Oh, no! He tried to skedaddle on me. I got confused by Goldo. Die.    Got him with that Raccoon kick. Who's next? I got a little scouter, too. I guess Goldo just doesn't know how to... Wait, are you getting a reading? I'm getting a reading? Where, though? Over there, I guess? Okay, I'll just go that way. Oh, no, dude. I got to go to B. I got to go to B. They're going to try to usurp me at B. I see him! No, you better not. You better not. Let me hit him with the Raccoon. Clap the hand, baby. Dash! Where are you at? No! Then they stop. Then they freeze. Let me see some hands. Then they... Let me see some hands. Raccoon kick! Oh, you thought that was going to work, huh? No. No, no, no. Oh, they jump at me. Oh, they jump. Raccoon bummer! I don't think it worked. In fact, I don't even know where they are.  This can't be how it ends. Not a raccoon. And I missed. And he didn't. Oh! Damn! Where'd he go? How did I lose him? Oh, my God, they're all over there, dude. Stop. Bro, didn't they buff the Raider, too?  Like, this should not be mathematically possible. Bro, if you don't get off me, bro... Oh, he's dead. You're dead. You're dead. Just die. Okay, I got to finish him off. Raccoon blaster. Okay, we're close. We're close. We're close. Who's fighting me? Who's fighting me right now?   There's no hope! There's no hope! Shit! Oh, wait, what? Wait, who's going to save me? Or am I just... Yeah! It's one of these Raiders, bro. Even when I die, I still win. Damn, he's good. How do you beat me? You can't. Hands off the merchandise. Who's behind here?  And it was pointless. Ah, you missed.  Oh, why the... Damn, I got him with the scouter look.  I don't want to do this. How do I... How do I stop?  This is pointless. Great. I'm glad I'm wasting so much time.  I just watched these two guys pose. They're literally at 50%. This didn't help my case. Hey, stop with the barrier! Crusher ball! Okay. Purple Comet attack! Damn, I'm just... I just got the lock on. So we're really going to fight me. Okay, I'm just going to destroy this.  Oh, that kind of hurt. Oh, deal. Bro, where do you get off, bro? Crusher ball. Stop. Stop. Stop. All civilians are gone. Damn! Bro, was it that... You ain't even got clothes on, man. How you fighting Jace? You ain't even got clothes on to be doing that. Energy.  Damn!  Bro, leave me alone, man. The meta always progressing here. Damn! Who's doing the spear bomb? Hey, you! I like that body, bro. Come on. Please die. You got to die. No. No. No, you're dead. You're dead. And give me the Dragon Ball. Just die. Just die. Hurry. Can you hurry? Why do you execute people slower than you?   Destroy this. I sure hope nobody tries to kill me. Yes. Yes. Yes, dude. Yes. I'll literally take your body if you try to fold me, bro. Don't do... Let's go! Give me that! Nice body, bitch! And make it for men. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!  Yeah, no. Get your friend out of here, bro. Yep. I'm a bit different. No, don't fight me. Don't fight me. Just don't do it. No, no, no. You don't fight me.  Got to destroy this. Yeah, nice body. Even though you guys literally... What? What? What's happening? Did I win? These are the only two that survived? What? A special fighting pose just isn't the same with only two. Bro, what a sad windscreen! Goldo and Goku. Hey, I'll take it, though. I mean, I was kind of getting worked to the point where I literally got killed four times, but I mean, cool. Let's go. Please don't be... Yes, it's not. Get rid of all people. All right, good. Easy assignment from Frieza. I'm glad he's got us on the case. Get rid of all people. Destroy all humans is finally back. Hello? Oh, there's no people in here. But there is somebody around here. I can hear him crying, sniveling. Oh, it's got to be right here. Are you sniveling in here? You should have never let me know where you are. Goldo. We're already up one. Huge. Back out. I'm not sure what the d-pad does. We're going to destroy every building. Got to play the Breakers meta.  Goldo is speedrunning. This is a run, folks. This is a run. I'm hearing footsteps. I'm hearing footsteps. What was that? Oh, looky, looky, we have here.  Don't you run. Oh, look who hit his head. Look who hit his head. Freeze for me. Okay. So that ability is not as good as it was. Oh, he's dead, though. So you try to escape from Goldo. Got him again. Who's running around here? Who was it? All right, I'm going to go in here and get this guy. So you can rescue your little friend if you want. But I'll remember where you guys are. All right, can you stop talking?  We got to blow up A. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go, go, go, go. I can't believe I have to watch this guy pose eight times. Go. Oh, posed up. Oh, they got A. I'm too late. I was too late, man. Oh, damn. I can hear somebody walking around down there, too. All right. Let me do a quick, quick scatter check. Oh, yeah, I'm feeling. Got some strong readings from over there. Do I clap my hands? Do I go for it? Oh, hell, I'm going to do it. Where you at? So you climb it, huh? Where you climbing? Nah, I got you for three minutes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Clap it of hands. Clap it of hands. Where you going? Oh, I got him for three minutes. You ain't going nowhere. You ain't going nowhere, baby. Raku is too fast. Somebody else is trying to get. Who's over here? Let me get a quick reading. We got him. We got him right here. Dead to rights. I should start clapping my hands now. Where do you go? All right. I'm not going to lie. I got you. Oh, clap the hands. Where you going? Nah, I got you. What? He's been fighting me. Hey, good. Good, good, good. Clap the hands, baby. Clap the hands on him. Clap the hands. Don't run from me. Oh, he's got me crossed.  Holy moly. Holy moly. He's got me dead. He actually just outskilled me. I got him. I got him, though. Stop that. Hey, y'all do some damage. Y'all hurt. Y'all hurt. Clap the hands. Okay. Clap the hands. Okay. Never mind. They have what? Raccoon. Raccoon. My goodness, man. There's a time and a place. There we go. Good enough. There we go. Good enough. All right. So they definitely saved their friend. They fought with a passion, bro. That was crazy. All right. Now I need to find where that. Oh, what is that, bro? What are you doing? Raccoon. Give him the clap. And I clearly have to be locked on for that to be effective. Okay. Well, dash back. Oh, that's Goldo. Damn it. Goldo, what are you doing out here?  Oh, I really thought that was a player. Oh, but that is a player. Oh, that's two players. That's a little dynamic duo over here. Hey, fellas. Hey, fellas, I must have missed the memo. I didn't know we were going on a walk today. How come nobody invited me? I can't believe you tried that. I can't believe they tried that. Oh, damn. These two, these two posers coming in on my good time. That was going to have some real fun. True. Just when I was getting good, somebody was swinging. Hey. Hey, Berger, you're faster than me, bro. Go get him. Yeah, go get him, Berger. Oh, he's walking away. You can't walk away from Jace. I'm going crazy. Oh, they got a cool pose. I'm hearing some footsteps.  Oh, another dynamic duo. I see gold over there doing good work. I know I heard you guys over here. I know I heard you guys. Oh, further catch up to him. Further catch up to him. I never know how to use Berger. Can I let him get away? Do I purple common attack? Or do I just drop a quick crusher ball? I'm going to go with quick crusher ball. Damn, Jace, swinging a miss. That was not even close. All right, purple common attack it is. We'll hit him with everything we got. Come on, baby. Got him. Got him. Huge dynamic duo. We are back at it. Jade pose. Appreciate it. Let's go. All right, now one more person to handle. Do a quick scouter check. Oh, would you look at that? Further go block the door. Oh, birdie, you missed. Oh, this is just a normal dude. Oh, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling great, actually. Only one person left. Is that a time machine? Oh, no. Somebody escaped. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm freaking out. Damn, those signs of life? Where is this guy? I want to pick up this dragon ball. Nice. Goes good with my collection. Another one. Oh, damn it. He slipped by the entire Ginyu Force. Ha, ha, ha. Birdie looks confused. He don't really mind too much. Yeah. Woo. Now that has a ring to it.  All right, for the last raid, I'm switching over to gold, though, and I'm readying up. Final raid. Last time we got a really good start. Also, the keys, I guess, were just pretty hard to find, so. I'll definitely take what we got last round, but if we can get a better start, I'm all for that as well. I'm really hoping for an earthling drop here. Oh, huge time loss. Oh, my God, it's getting worse. Oh, my God, look. Oh, is somebody frozen in time in there? Hey there, buddy. Goldoblast. Goldoblast. Got him. Classic maneuver. All right, well, it wasn't an NPC, but I'll definitely take that. Unfortunately, he probably saved somebody, though. That time stop is so cool. I'm hearing somebody. I'm hearing somebody. Where? Where? Come on, bro. I don't want to be stuck on gold, though. Hello. Different. Okay, out. Bro, I'm destroying everything.  If you are the... Oh, my God, they got two keys already. They got two keys. I'm getting smoke. Well, well, well, look at this. Oh, my God, so far away. I got to turn around. I got to turn around because I think I heard the survivor.  Why would they leave a survivor? Of course they wouldn't do that.   That was a fumble. That was a pretty bad fumble. I'm not going to lie.  Oh, my God, please. Just somebody. I got to at least switch over to Raccoon. I have no scouter. Somebody, please. Oh, I'm cooked. Oh, it is so over, bros. We got him. We got him. Little freeze. I didn't catch him. Damn. I'll have to go with the Goldo Blaster. Nice. Oh, come on, Goldo. Try harder.  Freeze. All of you. Yeah. Don't even think about jumping gold. Hey, they beat me. Please. Oh, my God. They're going to kill Goldo. Won't anybody save my life?   There's no getting around it.  Take care of the rest. Thank you, Raccoon. Yeah. So you all want to fight now, huh? Yeah, I didn't think so. All right. We're already down one getting you force member in the pose. So that's not too good. I'm hearing some footsteps. Let me bust out the scouter. Fellas. Fellas. You didn't have to gather like this. You didn't have to give this to me. And flying Nimbus. Where are you going? No. Bro thought he was Gohan in his prime for real. Where are you going? Don't try that. Raccoon, where are you going? Don't run from me. Raccoon kick. Holy moly. Oh, and the Dragon Ball too. Give me that. Big. Get another one going. Get another one going. Go, go, go, go, go. Another Gohan in his prime. You'll everybody go into Orange High School, huh? What was the high school called in Dragon Ball? They just all trying to get an education. Give me that. Give me that. All right. Clap the hands then. Got to make more distance. You're not going nowhere. You're not going nowhere.  I just always miss by at least seven miles. Scatter check. Make sure they're still in the area. Oh my God, they lost me. It's what they think. I'm going in. I know you're hiding in here, dude. Bro, who escaped? Oh, no, this can't be happening. I'm getting a big reading from over there. Good enough. I know it's an NPC, but I'll take it. I know it's an NPC, but I got to do what I got to do to get to the next level. We've got a couple down. I'm more worried about how many are left though. This is rough. This is definitely rough. There we go. Who's doing that? Who's doing circles over there? Bro is doing donuts in the parking lot while Raccoon's flying around. That's a risky way to live. It's a risky way to live. You in here? Oh, would you look who it is? Would you look who it is? Where'd you go?  Please don't tell me I got it.  Did I just get tased? Where you going? Where you going? Where you going? Nowhere. You ain't going nowhere. You ain't going nowhere. Let's go. How did you have enough to transform again? Okay. I don't like your get off me tool that much, Raccoon. It's pretty bad. Aw, damn. He gave me the slip. But I'm right back on him again. I could go for the eraser gun, but I just don't think it's going to hit.   Instant transmission with the barrier.  But I still got the reeds. I'm still going to punish somebody for that. Aw, damn it.  I really was just about to have some real fun though. Oh, that was, that was better. Anybody in here? Nope. Okay. No, I'm leaving. Where are you guys? Oh, hello. Hello. Hello.  In fact, here, take a little Crusher ball. Oh, I got him now. I got him now. You can't dodge this one. You can't dodge this one. The purple comet attack. Oh, there he goes. There he goes. Nice. Um, Berter, can I get the low down on if anybody is...  Let me just check this guy. Oh, excellent. Berter, go scout that cave. All right, I'll go this way. Stop climbing that wall. The Crusher ball, that. Big time. Oh, yes. This is the way Ginyu Force was meant to be played right here. A little bit of a crash. But then we immediately go into the comet attack. You can't dodge this one. Oh, oh, he tried his best, too. Wait, where'd he go? Oh, he's dead.   Well, I can't let you have that. Can't let you have this one. What is the range of scouter? It's OP. Pose on him, Jace. Pose on him. Swing the fist, swing the fist. Berter. And now. All right, now let's finish this startup system. Hey, fellas. So, who wants to fight Jason Berter? You're reading? I'm getting a reading.  Oh, I got four dragon balls. Could you perhaps have the fifth? Oh, that's a taser? I thought that was him. Oh, it's a transmission? I saw where he was looking, though. I saw he was looking somewhere over here. I don't know if that necessarily means anything, but if he was sensing his energy before teleporting, then maybe that means he was looking over here at that energy. Anybody think I might have a theory or two? I'm just going to get some light work started on this. Nothing too crazy, obviously. I'm not looking to destroy it just yet. Doesn't look like they necessarily want to fight for this. Well, we've got plenty of time. I'm not destroying this. No. No, that's not how this ends. Not when the guinea fowl. I got to steal somebody's body. I'm here in footsteps. I got to know if you thought that would work. I got to know. You thought I wouldn't check? You thought I wouldn't check? Where you at?  Or did you slip past me? No, Berter would have caught it. You're definitely still in there. You thought it would work, huh?  You slipped past me.  I see him. I see him. Berter, go catch him. Catch him, Berter. Maybe a quick pressure ball. Quick pressure ball. No. Purple combat attack. Please, please land one, dude. Yes. I got you. I'll catch you. Oh, well, at least your spine broke. You're alive? Whoa. What was that blade attack? That was cool. Oh, captain. Where's my captain at? Yes, sir. The saucy blade.  Alrighty then. Oh, you guys making this a little easy for me. Did you tackle? Excuse me, sir. Could you get your hands off the merchandise? Excuse me, sir. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm feeling good. Oh, damn.  Oh, there we go. There we go. What am I laughing about? Okay. Now I got to go steal a body.   You just look perfect. Aw, he led me on a wild goose chase. The gum attack, man. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Dodge. Oh, never mind.   I can't have you thinking you got hope. My four dragon look back. Where you going? Nah, you can die, bro. You had your fun in the sun. You can have your fun in the sun later. Pose on him. Now where are you guys? Well, well, well. Look at who you have here. The barrier will work. He's trying to distract me. Your body is mine. No. All right, fine. You guys lose. Forget you guys, man.  I had to, oh, look at that. Oh my God. I gave him the roundup. Get off me. All right. You got me. Well, you do well. No running. No running no more. No.  Now, where can I go about getting a good body? Where'd you go? Don't run. There's no playing run. No. No. No. All right. Come on out now and I'll spare you. You hit him here, didn't you? Shit. I got, I got you. Shit. Not good. No. From what? He slipped me at the last second. Damn. All right. Get on out of here then. Still looking good. I will really need to pull off an epic. I forgot. Goldo died. I forgot, dude, dying and being able to res is so busted.  All right. Well, that was good chat. That didn't use pretty fun. I like the change body thing, even though I couldn't pull it off. We did pull off the body change in one match though. So that was pretty cool.


So, okay, hello everyone, thanks for joining this second meeting of the second cohort of the Active Inference Textbook Group where we're going to be discussing chapter one. Today is September 9th, 2022. So I'll minimize this and you guys can click on my screen and that will show you the full screen of what I am presenting. So what we'll do in the live meetings here for the next two and a half months or so is totally going to be driven by the material that's in the chapters and in the appendices. So we're going to go to the questions page and we're going to look at the questions that have been asked for that week, for that theme, and we're just going to start with the most upvoted questions.  So we will start with the most upvoted questions and then we can take notes here in the discourse, in the answers in the discourse, and if you just click on that, it opens this page and anybody is free to write here. And after addressing the questions, which is probably going to be most of the time and discussing them, then we will move on to maybe look at the ideas more broadly over here. So we don't really have too many questions. If anybody wants to jump in and write a question, we did send an email reminder that, because this was pretty empty over the course of the week, but hopefully thinking by writing in this way will be a structure where we'll be able to hear everyone's perspective and leave the coda in a better place than we found it. So if anybody wants to jump in and write additional questions in the coda now would be a good time. And then after looking at the questions, we will pull back and focus a little bit more broadly. So maybe we'll go over here to touch on the ideas and insights of the chapter and then ideas for that week. And then in the last minutes, we can just see if there's been any changes to the project ideas and start to see what people are excited about applying active inference to. And then we will end at the top of the hour. So let's just head over to the questions, the cohort two questions page, and take a couple minutes to put some questions in here. So just so you guys know, control plus and control minus are good ways to scroll in and out to get like the right view of the screen, and then you can hide this little textbook bar over here. So I'm going to hide that and just give everybody maybe like five minutes to put in a question or something that we'd maybe like to discuss from chapter one of the textbook. So maybe we could just take like one more minute and wrap up these questions. Just want to say like to everyone at any point that there's always the affordance of just listening and also of just rewatching this recording. There's also the affordance in gather to raise your hand, see if I can show where that is. It's been a long time. Over here, there it is down at the bottom. So there's this raise hand feature and lower hand. Yeah. Okay. And then if you would, you can raise your hand if you would like to share just on that particular question, and we're going to have them up in the coda. And you can also pull up the answers in the discourse and that will pull up the focus view of the question. And everybody is free to collaboratively like edit the answers here in the discourse. It's better to really add and be noisy, even if it's just like a bullet point list or an incomplete thought, or if there's incoherence or if it's contradictory, those are all fine. It just adds information and perspective on the question. So yeah, we're going to open up each question, the answers in the discourse and read what has been read and already contributed in the answers. And then also people want to share other thoughts that they're having. That's awesome. And then if anybody also just wants to be taking notes, just things that are coming to mind or they don't want to share in a speaking way or just taking some notes on what other people are saying. So this is really a participatory group. And so it just is what we make it here. OK, cool.  I won't see any raised hands and gather. All right, let's see. I need a double screen. Let's see if I can do it in a small way. OK, cool. All right, so let's get into it. This first question, I'll pop it open. And it says, what is the difference between a stimulus response mapping and a state action policy? So I don't know. Does anybody have any ideas here? I'm not. I think that they're both kind of like an if this, then that, but they're specific, I think, to machine learning. So if anybody has any of like more depth or background in this area, that would be awesome to hear. So I don't know the way I kind of think about it. Oh, is that Arun? Did you raise your hand? Arun? Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, cool. I can give a very, I can give an attempt to an answer to that, which from my understanding, and please tell me if I'm wrong, when you've got the stimulus response mapping, you've got 100% certainty on what the stimulus is. So with the states, you're then factoring in beliefs about you've got uncertainty. So maybe just at a simple form, you could be chucking a Gaussian distribution on every stimulus and then a Gaussian distribution on what your response is to go from state act to go from stimulus response mapping to state action policy. That's my intuitive understanding of what's going on. But again, please tell me if I'm parking the wrong tree. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing. And I kind of think about it in the same way, I don't know. I mean, this is probably totally wrong, but I think about the Roomba, the little vacuum that cleans your house. And so if you turn it on, it turns on and moves. That's the stimulus. You push the button and then it turns on. And then it moves around because you pushed the power button. It's a very clear thing. Versus the state action, if it's full, if the vacuum gets full, then it dumps out. But that state of fullness is a distribution. So it can be more or less full when it senses how far it is away from the dump-out bucket or whatever. So that's the state action. The state can be full. But what is too full for the Roomba? Is it a certain weight that's in there or a certain volume or sensor? I don't know. I have uncertainty about when the Roomba dumps itself out. Cool, awesome. So we can just write this in here. And anyone is free to take notes and type in here. OK, cool. Yeah, and anyone's free to just get in here and jump in and do this. All right, so let's look. Let's look at this one. All right, so this question says, is the brain trying to maximize qualia divergence and minimize encoding length? Ali? Sorry, I raised my hand before. I just wanted to add some comments about the previous question, because I think it's a very important one. You see, as we go on specifically in the chapter 4, when we encounter the concept of Markov-Blanket, well, I think we can see kind of more granular differences between those two concepts, between stimulus response mapping and state action policy. But briefly, states are just representations of internal or external world. And actions are specifically goal-oriented responses. And they just try to change the state of the system or the agent. But when we're talking about just stimulus response mapping, I mean, response doesn't necessarily try to change the state of the agent. As an example, if you touch a hot object, the pain you feel is just a response. But if you move away your hand from that hot object, it's an action which tries to change the stimulus. And one other important distinction here is the term policy is used in a different sense in active inference literature as compared to reinforcement learning literature. Namely, in reinforcement learning, this term is often used to refer to singular mappings or one-to-one mappings from states to actions. But in active inference literature, policy usually refers to possible sequence of actions, not just singular actions. So that's, I think, one important distinction we need to have in mind also. Cool. Awesome. Thank you very much. And I looked that up actually. So here, I think that when they talked about state action policies, they were using it in the machine learning case because it says in the textbook, the goal-directed character of action and active inference is in keeping with early cybernetic formulations but distinct from most current theories that explain behavior. Oh, sorry, someone's talking. Could you please mute? Thank you. So it says distinct from most current theories that explain behavior in terms of stimulus response mappings or state action policies. So I think that this here, they're not talking about the active inference state action policies, but they're using it in the reinforcement learning way. So it says also stimulus response or habitual behavior then comes a special case of a broader family of policies in active inference. So I think that the way that they were talking about it in the textbook refers to the reinforcement learning way as opposed to the active inference way, which Ali is correct. It's definitely different. Any other comments or thoughts on this question? And thank you for whoever is taking notes in the coda. That's always super helpful. So we can move on and look at this question. Is the brain trying to maximize qualia divergence and minimize encoding length? Who has some thoughts here? Just the idea of maximizing qualia divergence seems like at some point that's beyond schizophrenic maybe. So there's some maybe threshold at which you would not want to go beyond. And that seems to have something to me, seems to have something to do with epistemic value. If you can't just try to maximize your epistemic value forever, you would end to a pragmatic problem that's encoding length. So I guess I'm wondering if maybe a different framing of the question or commensurate framing of the question is what's the relationship between epistemic value and pragmatic value like are there trade-offs there? Yeah, I scammed through chapter 1 and really didn't see qualia divergence or encoding length there in the chapter. So I'm not really, is this anyone's question? Do you want to unpack this question a little bit more for us, maybe? No volunteers. Awesome. Daniel, thanks for joining us. I will, I can officially pass the baton off to you and maybe you have some comments about maximizing qualia divergence or minimizing encoding length here. But we got in and we wrote a few questions and we went through the first one. We could also go back and touch on that if you've got comments on that as well. Questions just makes me wonder what is being minimized? What is being maximized? And when is it some particular value that's being minimized or maximized? And when is it the divergence between which other differences? And in chapter 1, there aren't any of the formalisms yet, but we'll see a lot of double lines and KL divergences that will cue us towards where a divergence is being at least described. If you're ready, I can unshare my screen and you can take over. Please continue. OK. Any more additional, additional comments here? I like this. Is qualia, I didn't get to write this down, but Brock had mentioned qualia divergence, schizophrenia, beyond schizophrenia, that was the term. Diversity, you can imagine, is necessary and some more might be really healthy and useful. But at some point, then you have multiple personalities or something? That makes me think of the sense of normalcy and what is experienced as normal and how much of a deviation from normal is perceived as like what is perceived as normal and where is it perceived as creative and maybe even enjoyable, novelty, like a guitar solo? And then where is the qualia divergence too high and maybe uncomfortable? And then what's the view from the inside with that actual experience, like what qualia brings in? And then where is this being modeled from the outside with behavioral descriptions where we might not be able to directly address what the qualia are? And Daniel, that reminds me like some of it might be, you said some of it might be normal and some of it might be uncomfortable and or some of it might be, some divergence might be creative and some might be uncomfortable.  Like studies have been done and it's like, I mean, there's the classic like songwriter, singer who commits suicide and we hear this again and again. But there's actually like a great degree of mapping between the creative type and some kind of atypical mental state. So maybe both of those are the same. OK, cool. Anybody have any comments? I don't know if I can see everybody in my tiny screen. Go ahead. Sorry. Hello. Hi. It's not clear to me what precisely it means a quality divergence because divergence with respect to what? I mean, usually a KL divergence is a divergence of like a measure of the difference between two distribution. So here what does exactly means maybe the person asking the question and clarify? I'll also just note that I'm sorry. I was just I don't I don't know if they're here. It's already asked. But to me, it just seems like internal kind of population of one quality asset, another quality asset that are differentiable. Like you can have divergence, certainly of qualia in your own experience if you just consider the various sensory kind of experiential states that you you occupy. Like, OK, so that means that would mean like expanding the range of of your phenomenology, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so you could imagine a sense of space and self, you know, that's kind of frequent and normative that if that starts to maybe in a religious or spiritual setting or other kind of group team settings, you know, you kind of get a group flow going maybe like that that starts to change. But but maybe if those two things greatly diverge that wouldn't be great. So that maybe is related to the complexity of that part of the model that encodes a representation of the self. So that would increase the complexity of the of the model, which is one part. One part of of the free energy immunization scheme. So that, I guess, I mean, with each increase in the epistemic import of of the of observation, then also complexity of the model don't needs to be kept within within some limit. So inside your blanket. So yeah, so it's probably it's a trade off between increasing the complexity of the model for what concerns the range of possible experiential yeah, quality and their epistemic value, I guess. Also just mentioned out of fairness that quality is not mentioned in the textbook. That's totally awesome to consider what the formalisms entail for philosophy in many papers and many discussions do. And it's like an important area to explore. But it's also not what is addressed. And I think it's probably even though these authors in other settings tackle the problem head on. The textbook is seemingly crafted to enable some discussions that might not require the consideration of the view from the inside or the phenomenology that qualia entail. And that helps the generality of the and the applications across different systems. And so understanding how they map onto our undeniable experience is a great area to explore. Yeah, overall the book doesn't expand too much on the part of the model that represents the agent itself as an entity, like our own self representation. It mentions it but does not really dwell onto it. More about that is probably in the book of Jacob Hoey. There's a little bit more on that, but in this one, not so much. Well, perhaps this connects to the following question on self-evidencing. So before we jump forward, I just want to stay on this question for one second. So I looked up the definition of qualia here. And it's the individual instances of subjective conscious experience. And I don't know, maybe in the question, which let's read it again, it says, is the brain trying to maximize qualia divergence and minimize encoding length? So I was wondering if this maybe is meant for a question like in an evolutionary sense. Like, is this what the brain is trying to do across time, in deep time, from prehistory to now? So yeah, we can move on, though, because maybe self-evidencing is more addressed in the book than qualia divergence. Yeah. So what does self-evidence and inactivism really mean? Does anyone want to take a stab here? Yeah, I asked the question, because when I read up, my eyes just glaze over when I hit these words. I can read them in sentences, and I just doesn't stick in my head what is really meant self-evidencing. It just turns into something tautological. I don't have any real grasp of what is being said in these sentences. I can take a stab at that, because really it's quite a simple concept. So if we think about the agent, not as having a model of the world, but being itself a model of its own environmental niche, then minimizing free energy basically means working, acting, so as to collect the observation that it expects, that is minimizing surprise. So since you can say finding the evidence for its model of the world, but since the agent is a model of the world, that becomes self-evidencing. So basically, you could also see it as trying to find the sensory stimulation that makes your phenotype, your organism viable, that sustains you. So that's evidence in finding the observation, the sensory evidence that is more coherent with your makeup as an organism. Thanks. I'll add a few notes. So inactivism is a long-lived thread in cognitive sciences that is long existing before active inference. And it is describing that systems with bodies, real, particular things existing in the world, ought to be having their cognition modeled as bodies engaging with the world, rather than them taking a view from the outside or necessarily needing everything to be like symbolic communication. Whereas in digital systems or abstractions of cognitive systems, it's very easy to get into some information and symbol passing discussions. Whereas for real systems with biomechanics and embodiment, inactivism brought attention to the requirement of considering the active engagement of an entity with its niche. So maybe it's not a term that provides a huge cognitive model update, because for many people it's very natural to consider cognitive systems as inactive and embodied, embedded, encultured, et cetera, et cetera. And sometimes that's called 4E cognition. And those are all like in allegiance together. But that's what inactive points towards. And self-evidencing is describing that the imperative of systems as modeled under active inference is for them to accrue consistent observations and find evidence for the kind of thing that they expect and prefer themselves to be. And in the coming weeks, we'll explore this like expect and prefer and how can expectations be preferences and what about when we expect bad things to happen and uncertainty about expectations. But we can contrast this imperative for finding consistent, self-consistent, or self-evidencing observations rather than pursuing rewarding observations. So one can say I expect and prefer to be at room temperature and then moving around the space or putting the jacket on or off to reduce surprise about what observations one is receiving as opposed to needing to construct a reward framework in which room temperature is rewarding and then it gets less rewarding. And then what is being maximized is the reward of the cognitive system. And again, in contrast, self-evidencing puts the imperative on the system's self-model and reducing surprise about its own observations rather than seeing those observations as just proxy of reward states that have to be maximized. Arun? I found both of those answers really interesting. And I have a question to each of those. So on the self-evidencing, we have, so maybe this is fast-forwarding a little bit in the book, but they talk about both generative models and generative processes, and those are distinct ideas. So when we're talking about an organism as a model in its niche, it's still distinct from the generative process, right? So that's something that I'm not 100% sure on, and I also find the self-evidencing part a little bit circular, and I don't quite have a good understanding of that. So in my mind, the generative model and the generative process are very distinct. And yes, you're looking for, you're an organism and you're in your niche and you want to succeed and by natural selection or whatever, we only really see organisms that succeed. They're going to look for things that meet their priors, such as a nice homeostasis, food, reproduction, all of that sort of stuff. That's sort of my understanding of that part, but it's still an organism using a model to navigate the world rather than it is a model itself. And then also on the idea of minimizing free energy, but also it's not a reward. To me, it sort of is a reward. It's just a reward with respect to a prior distribution. So yes, you're minimizing free energy and you have a prior preference of being at room temperature. That's great. But you still have an objective function, or functional, I think as the book calls it. You're just subtracting the prior distribution of temperatures that your body likes. So I still see that as like it's fundamentally an optimization problem. It's just the units are a bit different and it's all statistical distributions and the differences between them rather than, I don't know, X minus X bar squared, that sort of thing.  So I don't know if anybody can clear those up. Thank you. So can I follow up on that then? So on the inactivism, I think the problem is knowing what the specific meaning of it is compared with embodied and embedded because those ease are so often used together. What is, where would you say inactivism rather than embodied? And I think you touched on it by saying about it involved in having a model. Maybe whereas being embodied doesn't. I would suggest that inactive calls the action into focus whereas the embodiment in the embedded refer to just the materiality. But the reason why they are allegensed as for E, E, E, E, E, etc. They're just fingers pointing at the moon. They're just fingers pointing at real embodied organisms and some of the complexities of modeling them and framing them in contrast to disembodied approaches. So they're pointing at organisms and their different theoretical vectors that have been taken and some of the synthesis amongst them has already been carried out. Yeah, inactivism became popularized, the notion with Francisco Varela by Francisco Varela actually. And I think he was not too fond of the term actually. But anyway, the thing is that he wanted to stress the fact that cognition and consciousness emerges in the circularity between sensation and action. So that was enacted in the circularity, continuous circularity of action and sensation. So I also feel it's really close to the free energy approach and active input. And so though there are some of the early champions of inactivism like Evan Thompson and some other scholars that argue that there are actually crucial differences. Anyway, for what concerns the difference between the generative process and the generative model, the generative process is basically the actual physical processes that turns causes into stimuli that impinge on our sensory surfaces. The generative model is the best guess that an organism can make about that. So they're not identical, of course. The organism tries to learn at its best the generative process, but it's just a model. Ali? Yes, and I also wanted to mention Jacob Howe's well-known paper, The Self-Evidence in the Brain, which I believe is the seminal paper which introduced this concept of self-evidence into active inference literature. And in that paper, he also contrasts this term with inactivism, inactivist, and all the other four e-cognition frameworks and theories, but briefly he believes that the self-evidence in brain by putting a boundary, namely the Markov blanket, as one of its essential components in order for it to be able to infer the states of the environment, it can retain its cognition within its inner statistical or generative model. So that's one of the reasons the self-evidence in concept was deemed necessary to introduce at the first place. And self-evidence is something that just is beyond the biological brain and it can refer more generally and more broadly to any agent which tries to learn about its environment as a one dynamical system which tries to perform inference about the other dynamical system which is the outside world. But with a particular aim of trying towards the minimizing the error or performing the alastasis, so to speak. So that's one of the main differences between inactivism and self-evidence in concept here. It's also very illustrative to look at figure 1.2 and see where these terms are used in the context of the low road and the high road to active inference which is one of the key concepts in this chapter and it's describing how the following chapters are going to be structured. So we see self-evidence on this upper branch of the subway system coming down from the high road and we see some of these other terms that people have been mentioning like generative model coming up from the low road. And then in the same page that we were just discussing I copied some sections from the text that are describing these high and low road. They describe that the high road is starting from the question of how living systems persist and act adaptively in the world. And so that is very resonant with self-organization which is the first stop on that subway system from the high road. And also Varela's work, auto-poesis a lot of questions about how cognizant sentient systems persist. The high road perspective is useful to understand what living organisms must do and why. Why to be persistent via surprise minimization not via reward maximization and then what they have to do. So it's the what and the why in response to the broader question of how complex systems persist. That's the high road and we've had many discussions and fun for every person to also think about this high road, low road distinction but the high road is starting from a complex system thriving or persisting in a complex niche we can think of. And then the low road is starting from base theorem and continues up through the Bayesian brain also motivating active inference from a different direction and it is describing the low road perspective is useful to illustrate how active inference agents minimize their free energy. Well they're not necessarily doing frequentist statistics they're doing something that we can describe as Bayesian and this textbook is going to introduce base theorem briefly in a box and it's a big area and some people will be familiar with thinking about priors and updating priors and the way that's discussed in Bayesian statistics some will be familiar for some it might be novel but this is describing the atomic computational or statistical nucleus that is going to describe how different systems can fulfill that imperative that we saw traced out by the high road and Ali I know you have a lot to add on that. I've also put a pdf to Carl Friston's essay Beyond the Desert Landscape on resources page and also on the chapter 1 questions on notes page I believe this essay is the most comprehensively articulated and in my opinion very beautifully even poetically articulated account of the high road and low road distinctions and the philosophical distinctions between them if you scroll down I think you can find the paper I attached there right at the bottom of the page and I've also appended, yeah that's it the Carl Friston's no below that yeah Desert Landscape and I've also appended Andy Clark's reply to this essay because this chapter comes from this book called Andy Clark and its Critics which I think can help to understand the real differences between those two concepts and why it's important to distinguish between them when we want to understand any active inference related concepts thank you awesome thanks I'm going to just make note of that in here maybe just a comment on the why if you Daniel like talking about the high road is it why really because my understanding really is the perspective or the nature of the free energy principle is really as Carl says is more total logical than teleological and why seems to point to some sort of teleology so it's go ahead yes scientific or formal sense of teleology or end or goal directness are very interesting and another framework which is evolution has also thread the needle with tautology and teleology and so there's a lot to be said there about how those two categories aren't necessarily disjoint do you believe they have to be disjoint or are you expecting or preferring that they are if the imperative is to persist and survive and we simply don't observe systems that don't then that phenomena can be both tautological in the sense that itself describing as well as teleological in that from a perspective's view not speaking for the system itself but in the sense that it's not acting like it's trying to go deeper we don't need to entail any qualia or any sort of broader theological reason for that to occur we can describe something that is both teleological and tautological yes I think I agree I think that I think that I think that I think that from what often says that it's deflationary account is that basically the free energy principle basically describes self-organizing system just because it persists and so what characteristics does it need in order to persist and so in that sense is tautological it's just if it persists it must behave like that so you don't even need to put in any imperative to survive if it survives it must behave like that but of course as you said you can frame this self-organizing drive in a sense as some sort of imperative to maintain its form and function of the organism so there's a lot of interesting things to say about that and also one note is sometimes we speak in a mode of like what the imperative is for the system as itself in terms of what it normally should or imperatively must be doing but also we can just speak from ourselves as modelers of other things as what our modeling imperatives are and that is a slightly different question and that's sometimes known as instrumentalism it can be compatible with realism of various flavors and it's been explored broadly however from our perspective as observers things that are not acting as to minimize their surprise relative to some area in space that makes us say it's that kind of a thing if it's not staying in that space which we're defining as that kind of thing it's not that thing if the tornado we're not staying in some range of face space that we call tornado it wouldn't be a tornado to us and so sometimes that can be a more empirically grounded and less speculative stance to have two feet as us as modeling systems which is going to be consistent with the metabasian approach that's in the book and it side steps or preempts a lot of very thorny questions around speaking for what systems actually are or actually are doing and it's the difference between saying the thing is a model of its niche you know big if true we're going to model it as if it's a model of its niche it's irrefutable that's just a choice that we're taking and someone could say well I would have taken a different choice in modeling and you can say great what would your choice have been and there's actually a starting point instead of just this endless speculation around well what is the system really and especially when we think about our Markov blankets and our inability to make direct contact to hidden states it bolsters the justification of speaking as a modeler very cool anyone else with comments on this question self-evidencing and inactivism which we can talk I'm sure all day about sorry if I just finish off that I think possibly it's the language that's the problem self-evidencing it just sounds as though it's self-confirmatory but all it's doing is looking for support for its existence which is not a good strategy for survival why you say dead well if I only look for evidence of my existence rather than things that are a challenge to that then is it really related to the dark ring problem exactly for the sake of long-term persistence may be necessary to incur sometimes transiently into states that are surprising so there's no real there's no real incoherence there I think no I agree I'm just challenging it's as a language a bit of a language yeah great point and indeed the natural language is often heavily shading interpretations of different terms like around surprise belief expectation preference all these everyday terms which are core in the active inference ontology it's really important to interrogate our understanding of them and check their alignment with formalisms and this book is going to a large extent focus on the kernel active inference action perception loop single agent single level kernel and in that way it's very analogous to like a single linear regression in practice linear regression on large data sets sweeps across families of models there's all kinds of things that come into play just for the linear regression that's the kernel in a nested model one could reduce surprise and find confirmatory evidence I'm the kind of thing that seeks out novel information sources and therefore seeking out novel information sources is confirmatory evidence of that so once we step into multi layer models many of the absolutely valid limitations of the kernel in and of itself are addressed so those are like all the directions that people's questions on and written down are super important they're all the things that are direct adjacencies and relevant for applications and there's going to be things about real complex systems that the kernel does not describe totally so this isn't like the end of the active inference modeling of complex systems it's a total book it really is just describing the essence of the loop so I want to just give Arun the last comment because it's the top of the hour now so Arun yeah I just wanted to add to Neil's question again I fully understand where you're coming from when I first read about the self-evidencing thing I was like that makes zero sense and exactly what you described you're not going to look from predators like as a basic thing that's not evidence of my existence that's evidence of my death but I think the way I've sort of come around to it is it's all about the prior preferences and what you expect to see and yeah this occupation of face space I think is quite important of you you sort of get attracted to particular states where you're comfortable but you do need to know about the rest of the world anyway that's the plan for not being in those states sometimes and so looking for evidence of your existence is all about matching those priors and those priors can be pretty flexible so yeah that's I think that will in my mind like that comes through a bit later on in the book I think so I would say my advice to you is stick with it but it was very counter-intuitive to me as well when I first came across it you


Okay, so we're gonna look at the respiratory structures associated with the head here So first we can see our external nears. So these will be your nostrils are You have the nasal conches, which you may remember from AP1. So you have a superior nasal conch a Middle nasal conch and an inferior nasal conch. You've got the hard palate here soft palate back here You have the cribiform plate here You have the frontal sinus way up here in the frontal bone You have this phenoid signs Sinus back here The internal nears remember our external nerve was your nostrils the opening there with the internal nerve is back here It's kind of this line right here The nasopharynx is the region right in here The pharyngeal tonsil sits in the back The uvula is what hangs down here Palantin prod or tonsil is right below that Linguel tonsil is at the base of the tongue So this is your tongue lingual tonsil Oral pharynx is this region right here Teeth Label or lips Epiglottis is this little flat guy right here Glottis is this region right here structure here pharyngeal pharynx is the region right here where you're at the base Of the larynx and the esophagus and then your vocal cords are here


Nile DeManna is the CEO of Manna Molecular. And one of the cool things I learned about this company recently is that within Manna is another company called Vella. And it has a lot to do with products geared towards women and in particular women and their sexuality. And I'm going to turn it over to Nile because now you were telling me about some of the research that Manna had done. And that's really kind of what sets Manna Molecular apart, in my opinion, is that this is a company that really heavily focuses on the science and they let the science take them wherever that goes. Tell me how Vella came about. Yeah, sure. So Vella came about. We were looking for a second product. We did patches first. And that's a very niche product, very high barrier to entry and requires specialized knowledge. And we liked that method. And we wanted to apply it to whatever our second product would be. And I had the good fortune of being asked to sponsor an event in LA. And I said yes. And they had the former head of the FDA, David Kessler, there. And the host was this doctor, Dr. Herron Padman-Nathan. And as he was recruiting me for an investment, just to sponsor his event, I got to talking with him and really liked him and just said, hey, you've had a really amazing background. What do you think about cannabinoids in women and sex? And he was kind of interested in it. And the more I talked to him, the more I convinced him that this would be a good idea. And I eventually ended up recruiting him to the company. And we agreed to follow the same development pathway of Viagra and Cialis, two drugs that he was the principal investigator for. And lo and behold, we found in an organ bath study that there is a dose-response relationship to CBD and smooth muscle tissue relaxation in the vagina. And from there, we got really excited because that's the same pathway that all these other drugs work for. And we went on to test it in 30 women at a 90% success rate across four orgasm outcome measures and a 60% success rate across two arousal measures. And this is a clinically validated instrument, which we modified for our purpose. And then we tested it in a population of women that were taking different antidepressants. And we found out that 100% of them were able to orgasm after they were not able to orgasm since going on their drugs. So all of those things combined made us really excited to move forward. And one really cool thing that we're going to do more of is this photoplethysmography study where you look at temperature and electrical response using probes. And this is from Nicole Prousey's lab. So she's featured in a lot of articles. And we have a relationship with her. So we got an N of 1 on that. And that was very positive, too. So through every indicator we took, we tried to disprove it. And we just kept getting better and better responses. And so this is a topical product, correct? Yeah, so we're calling it a women's pleasure serum. And it's a topical pre-placed serum for arousal orgasm. So the idea is you put it on 20 or so minutes before you have any sexual activity. And it causes relaxation down there. And that allows enhanced sensation and engorgement. And these are hallmarks of good sexual experience. For maybe our readers that aren't as familiar with manumolecular, could you maybe talk a little bit about the company and the other products? Because I know them. But I just don't think maybe our readers are as familiar with your company. Sure. Well, I think that will change pretty soon. We're in about 12 markets. We do some white labeling, although we're really moving towards a strictly brand play, because we've gotten the recognition that we've gotten. But we make transformal patches. And we developed a method where our business licensees and people that are state licensed can basically kit our patches, take their extract, and apply it at the point of production, and create a very high quality repeatable product that's the same across every state. So while in California, we are selling patches under Papon Barkley's name. In a state like Ohio, we're under our own name. And that's more common than not. So in about nine of the 12, we're under our own name. We've got about three white labels. And right now, in fact, we've just released a speed tab, which is a sublingual tablet that, you know, onset is very quick. And we think of it as an ultra-fast edible. And we think that that category, you know, people, these units of gummies, you know, they're a great package for this. But I think it's a fast tablet that tastes good. And that's another thing we wanted to do is we're using naturally extracted terpenes and adding really cool flavors and effects to these. So there's something that you can use during the daytime to focus. We're making a CBN version, which we've gotten really, really good feedback on that to help people fall asleep. And I know COVID has really messed with people's sleep patterns. And we also have a CBD version. And we'll be making different ratios because it's a fast acting tablet. And it lasts for about 60 to 90 minutes. So you can use it to get high. You can use it to treat your pain or inflammation with CBD. Or you can use it to go to bed with CBN. And that's something that I've been using really recently. And it's certainly nice to have in your toolkit. Well, I really like the idea about the fast onset because that's always been the real tricky thing with edibles for people. You don't know whether it's going to take an effect in a half hour or an hour. It's really hard to plan around that. In the offset too, not to interrupt. But it's the offset to me has always been the most important because, hey, I want my experience. But I don't necessarily want to, I've got to go somewhere in three hours or four hours. And I think everybody right now is, they've got multiple Zoom calls. You're at home. Everybody knows that you're at home. So they're more likely to call you at night or at odd hours because you've got nowhere. You're not going to be out. And so I think having something that can fit into somebody's schedule really nicely, you can watch your favorite TV show. And by the time the show's over, the effect's over. So that's kind of how we thought about it, is that there's these really discrete periods of time when you'd like to be able to switch it on and switch it off. And for people that don't like vaping, and given all the vape-related injuries we've been seeing lately, that's not going to go away.  And we understand that. But I do think that people are looking for different methodologies. And there has been an incredible shift towards edibles in this year specifically. And we think that there is room to play in that space. We feel like we're trending up. And our investors feel the same way too. But we certainly welcome other people and other perspectives and other investors. We'd like to get bigger as a company. We'd like to do more deals with the MSOs that we have and expand into states with players that we already work with. So all of those things require capital and operational overhead. But I think we've got the platform technologies to expand, to add new terpenes, new experiences in our patches, and our speed tabs. And we have a beverage powder coming out in about three months too. And again, I think we're really more recreational focused than we were before. And ideally, consumers will really benefit from that. Well, thank you so much for spending your time with us at Green Market Report. I was super excited when I heard all this stuff about Vella. And I really wanted to bring that to our readers' attention and our viewers on our YouTube channel. So if you haven't already, subscribe to our channel now. It's free. And now, thank you so much for joining us. And we're going to keep our eye on man and molecular. I appreciate it. And you're one of my favorite interviewees. So thank you and appreciate the time.