Good afternoon or evening or good morning depending on where in the world you're joining us from. I'm Alex Stark. I'm a senior researcher at New America and I'm thrilled to be welcoming you to this event today. So it's the second in a series that we're co-hosting with the Bridging the Gap project, whose mission is to promote scholarly contributions to public debate and decision making on global challenges and US foreign policy. And our aim through this partnership is to really dig into the substance and the policy implications of cutting edge new research in the field and to bring it to a wider audience. And so we're just thrilled to be working with them on this. Today we're going to be doing just that with a talk by Tom Long. I'm going to turn it over now to our moderator Jim Goldgeier, who's a senior advisor of Bridging the Gap. And among many other illustrious roles that he has held in the past and currently he's a Robert Bosch senior visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of international relations at the School of International Service at American University where he served as dean from 2011 to 2017. So thanks so much everyone and take it away Jim. Thanks so much Alex and Bridging the Gap so excited to be able to partner with New America on this initiative and really grateful to Alex and to Heather Hurlborg for that opportunity to partner and we are showcasing a new release in the Oxford University Press Bridging the Gap book series and that is Tom Long, a small states guide to influence in world politics and just wonderful to welcome Tom, as well as two other panelists who work on important small initiatives, Emily Wilkinson and Wazeem Mola. Tom is an associate professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick. Wazeem is assistant director of the Caribbean Initiative at the Atlantic Councils Adrian Arshed Latin America Center and non-resident scholar at Florida International University's Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. And Emily's a senior research fellow at ODI, a director of the resilient and sustainable islands initiative and chief scientific advisor of the climate resilience execution agency for Domenica. So just welcome to the panel and congratulations Tom again on the book it's it's a great and much needed read. Thank you. As you point out when we study international relations were often taught study the great powers I'm particularly mindful of that because I did my PhD at UC Berkeley and Ken Waltz was on my dissertation committee and took his classes on international relations and that's what we focused on we focused on the great powers and you know his argument that they dominate and shape the international system is why we did that but as you point out in your book the vast majority of states are small and your book does a great job showing that these states aren't just the objects of great power politics but these states can have influence and you walk us through security issues economic issues environmental issues. And it's particularly great the way you do these comparisons with showing why some states have been more effective than others in trying to get what they want in the international system. So let's just start by just saying it just in addition to, you know, putting more international studies attention on these countries. What do you consider to be some of the most important takeaways for scholars and policymakers from this book. Thank you so much Jim for this invitation to the teams that new American bridging the gap for making this happen and also to a Zeme and Emily for joining us and and for everyone, everyone who is who is watching. So, to think about some of the takeaways for this book. First of all, exactly as you said Jim sort of the overarching point is is simple which is that small states. So I think the dynamics of asymmetrical relations the relationships between large and small states deserve much more attention than they often often receive. And, you know, as your anecdote about about Kenneth Waltz points out, you know, I think, particularly when we think about the way that international relations is taught, and the way that the Anglo American IR canon has been constructed small states are mostly invisible. I don't want to overstate that point of course there is a lot of research and great research on these questions, but often it's sort of relegated to to niche discussions. So, you know, I want to I guess start by by making a case for why I think small states matter to IR and then give a few takeaways for for policy policymakers as well. I guess, first of all, and following Waltz's influential example, the fields case selection has been overly focused on on great powers and, you know, great powers are obviously very important but they're also by their nature kind of outliers. And so this is really skewed the basis of IRs IRs theorizing. So looking at small states is is crucial for diversifying the empirical basis of IR and for developing more sort of comprehensive international relations theory. That's true if we think about small states is kind of units of analysis but what I'm going to argue is that we actually need to think about about relationships and so when we think about international relationships. And it's a small portion of those relationships that are kind of small that are sort of symmetrical relations amongst great powers. It's that many more of those relationships are asymmetrical. And I think that that really, that really matters for how we understand international relations. You know, and this is another place where I would sort of diverge from that structural reading of of international politics is that policymakers care a lot about small states and asymmetrical relationships if we look at the policymakers even in great powers, they dedicate a lot of time and attention and resources to small states, often small states kind of in there in their geographical vicinity. And the third reason is that small states have been called sort of a canary in the coal mine. And that's true and this is something that that certainly I think Emily can add quite a lot to in the same as well. But that's certainly true when we think about the effects of climate change on small island developing states. And that's also true when we think about questions of international order. When international order starts to change or norms international norms around say sovereignty or participation, or, or territorial conquest. If those norms begin to road it's often going to be small states who notice it first. So a related message for IR and how we study IR is kind of to take asymmetry seriously, and to think about the roles of smaller actors and how they constitute relationships and international order. There's a need to go beyond this idea of great powers as system determining. And so I'd say that the book really tries to think about power and influence and in more nuanced ways. And finally, the final point about about the kind of how we study IR this book is obviously positioned in the literature on small states, and there is a lot of work on that and I've incurred a lot of a lot of debts to smaller to scholars who work on small states. However, the work on small states has often been kind of scattered for a long time. It was very heavily focused on on on European small states, following Peter Katzenstein's example his influential early work on this. And that's been changing and there is a growing body of literature on small states around the world. But a lot of times this has led to kind of limited theoretical accumulation and theory building because small states when we think about the small state as as a category. It's been that includes so many states that are so different, different geographies different levels of development. Obviously there's no clear cut definition in terms of what the size of a small state is. And that's made it really hard to develop theories of small state behavior. And so the purpose of the literature this books of takeaway and contribution is to shift from looking at small states as kind of small like units, and to look at patterns in relationships, instead, and to do that looking across diverse regions and issues for policy makers. So the takeaways are sort of set on on two levels. First, there's, there's a broader takeaway, which is that, which is about how small states gain influence and that's that relationship and context really matters that small states influence needs to be seen in light of small states specific goals. And obviously definitely not always going to win, but that when we look at small states influence in this light, there are more opportunities than than might appear at first glance, can more concretely and this is really set of tools that the book tries to provide for for policy makers, the book sets out this sort of these analytical tools that depart from a couple of premises. The first is that is this idea about small states goals, and assessing them concretely in terms of what small states are trying to achieve instead of assuming that small states have goals that are similar to larger states that is the pursuit of power or, or perhaps autonomy. So thinking about small states goals in that way. Secondly, that small states goals and their international positions are often heavily shaped by a handful of relationships and that those relationships are often the most cement the most salient ones are often asymmetrical. By assessing those relationships and thinking about the dynamics of asymmetry policy makers can better identify patterns of opportunities and constraints. So those tools focus on kind of what I refer to as a scorecard that can be used to assess a particular case and cases in this book or try and try to construct them in a way that I hope is in a useful to to policy makers. Which is that they're focused, not on kind of one particular small state trying to achieve influence on on everything, but instead, the pursuit of a particular goal in particular relationships. Looking at those cases the scorecard hopefully allows policy makers to assess what type of case they're in, in a sense and what kinds of strategies might might apply in that type of case. I focus on the degree of policy divergence, how salient this issue is particularly for kind of relevant larger powers that that could also be applied to international organizations. So I'm wondering how cohesive are the preferences of different states and in that case, looking across those factors. The book offers a typological theory can eight different types of cases, and then offers some some some some explanations about opportunities and constraints in those cases, and what types of strategies might be most effectively pursued, depending on on the type of case. That's great. Thank you so much so so Emily and was in just wanted to turn to you here and just ask how the kinds of things that Tom has done in this book. How does how do these things help you with the work you're each doing on small state policies what what are sort of the things that that as you read as you read the book that you might have thought to yourself oh this is a useful thing for me for my own work as I move forward Emily we will start with you. Thanks very much and thanks. Thanks, Tom for sharing the book and advanced copy with me and I very much enjoyed reading it. I think the first thing to say is it kind of, it was great to read and found it very affirming of the kind of approach that we want to take with this resilient and sustainable violence initiative, which is looking at the relationship with focus particularly on small island developing states, and the, the international system, particularly access to finance the debt situation and looking at sits in that context and not so much putting the sort of blame if you like why sits are not able to respond to the difficult situation in which they find them particularly in the context of climate change by in making improvements in their own domestic governance so it's often. There's there's quite a, an important focus in in the literature and in the kind of policy arena on climate change around national planning. There's actually driven approaches, improving or enhancing that their capacity to be able to, to, to respond to climate change impacts to develop adaptation plans to develop kind of resilience agendas, as if this could all be it's all entirely dependent on the will and the sort of the their own ability to implement the kind of reforms that are needed. And what we want to do through the initiative is put a lot more emphasis on that kind of relational elements it was very, very encouraging to read your book and to see that kind of emphasis really, and also the acknowledgement that they, that since can have influence and you include the example in there of the influence that they were able to have on the climate change negotiations through the alliance of small island states a osis, which is I think a very important case and they continue to do so a osis continues to be a really important force within the climate change negotiations. And I would say even has a kind of leadership role for other developing countries as well, who will, would you kind of join in have similar agendas and similar want to see similar results come out of these negotiations, including now what is very current which is some kind of financing facility to compensate countries for the loss and damage which they will have experienced as a result of climate change so that's an area which I think since are really leading the, I'm pushing for, and will continue I think to be extremely influential so. Yeah I very much sort of enjoyed that that focus and sort of taking it away perhaps from, you know, the individual capacities that they might have or trying to kind of pull out. Yeah, that's the sort of the attributes of a particular small state and then trying to kind of replicate that, which I think, you know sometimes people working in the field of kind of climate policy would tend to do and rather looking more at this kind of the influence they can have through their relationships with, with, with large states, but also with these international organizations and institutions. So, I probably have more to say but yeah, I'll stop them, I'll stop there. Before I turn to Wasim, your last remark, I had wanted to follow up with you so I think I'll do this now which is, I mean one of the things that Tom does in the book is he shows the ways in which I mean small states I mean you know there's sort of multi pronged strategies I mean they're there, they've got bilateral relationships with particular major powers but they also of course are working through international organizations and they're, they're working together through international organizations and international negotiation processes and just curious your take sort of how you, how you see that, that effort of trying to, trying to pursue these different kinds of relationships and, and how those come together and interrelate. Yeah, I mean I think, I think they very much so we see different kinds of strategies and within these, the climate change negotiations it's definitely bringing together that kind of group to be able to kind of all speak with a collective voice on something that affects, you know, the SIDS in a common way. But I think you know that we can also see within that kind of leadership roles, different small island developing states we've seen political figures, leaders who have had a particularly strong voice in that arena who have been very influential and I think also kind of the focus of SIDS in the international arena and particularly around climate change which I think is something that I didn't see happen before so some of it, I suppose kind of international figures with real leadership on climate changes and come from small island developing states. And, and people are beginning to kind of recognize how important that is. So how this all comes together, I mean I think it's, it's, it's very much thinking about how can we, or something that I'm very interested in is how can we kind of decolonize the relationships between small island developing states and some of the kind of larger economies and certainly kind of developed countries advanced economies. Whether it's, you know, in terms of kind of trade negotiations, WTO relations, whether it's the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whether it's in relation to the eligibility criteria for accessing official development assistance, across all of these arenas, we need to be thinking more about policy makers need to be thinking more about how to support SIDS in achieving their own objectives and what a decolonized relationship would look like and that's something that certainly Rezi is seeking to, well we're having a lot of discussions with the UK government around, and this isn't an agenda that's very close to my heart. So I think that's one way of thinking about how that brings it all together because certainly from a UK perspective, a lot of small island developing states are former colonies, that's one thing that they have in common. And that, that very much kind of helps to helps us to understand that some of the common characteristics of these of small states and the ones that we that we're particularly interested in. It helps us to understand their vulnerabilities it helps us to understand the difficulties that they have engaging with the international system and helps us to understand that to some extent they're kind of the physical vulnerability and exposure to external shocks as well as their kind of, yeah, the particular sort of situation that they're in at being at the kind of frontline of climate change impacts as Tom mentioned so I think that for me that's one, one way of thinking about all of these relationships and how to kind of move towards a kind of a system that favours small states and a supportive of their of their own objectives. That's great thank you so was in turning to you for sort of any any big takeaways that you have for the kind of work you do and I'm particularly interested Tom one of the things Tom does in the book is to show where there are cases where small states are able to play off the great power against each other, Djibouti for example in the book is very interesting discussion there, and just given your work on China and Latin America, just curious how you see that. You know for countries that are that are looking to try to play off the China US competition in Latin America how that manifests itself for you. I mean it's a great question and first you know thank you to new America in the bridging the gap book series for the invitation to speak here and Tom. It's fantastic book on it I'll put it quickly putting my Caribbean hat on being from the region just seeing you know this type of book and showing the type of influence that we can have on the world and more particularly with, you know relationships with great powers I think it's really important to highlight. One quick thing I want to touch on that you mentioned the canary coal mine sort of aspect is, you know, Caribbean countries and its leaders and even not at the leader level just in general are very quick to sort of talk about the effects of global events, or global events in different parts of the world, climate change for sure is one but the pandemic very early on we saw Caribbean leaders sort of reframing the conversation of the pandemic to in a similar way to deal with climate change it being a moral imperative but you know reframing it in a way, you know, going from that aspect and saying look. You know, especially the Caribbean and a strategic location in the Atlantic Ocean saying look, if we don't solve these issues the effects of the pandemic you know it's going to affect, you know the United States and create instability which like affects the you know drug trafficking to Europe and really going using global stages to sort of reformulate the sort of the conversation about the pandemic in itself, which I thought was really impactful and I really picked up on that in the book.  A lot of the conversation was about us in China, but something that I noticed when Caribbean countries is it wasn't just us in China. The policy calculus with small states is. Yes, there's, there's fewer relationships that they have right the US would have relationships and more than 100 countries and the you know Caribbean countries maybe 20 to 30, but their foreign policy calculus is is much broader so the US and China yes but then they're also looking at countries in Africa, they're looking at India they're looking at the UK as different ways to play these countries off each other Canada as well you know we saw, you know, you know certain countries in the Caribbean first approach, China first approach India for vaccines when they had approached the United States and weren't getting it. Then they, you know they welcomed lots of sinopharm vaccines which then they sort of, you know, use the immediate media spectacle right you know having you know being across national media Prime Minister is going to the airports and you know receiving these vaccines and you know that had an influence and how the US had to mobilize its own vaccine resources to you know speed up the amount of time it takes to sort of ship them to the country and it actually in many ways, you know, I wouldn't say forced but it helped the US move from a multilateral approach really to start, you know, using bilateral donations. It's specifically in the Caribbean specifically with some countries in Latin America we saw very early on with with Mexico. And then some like really key points that I saw that I took from this book, you know it was really interesting is seeing the influence of small states, particularly from the Caribbean in real time, as I was reading this. I was in Barbados last week for a discussion on financial access roundtable. That was a part of a congressional delegation to Barbados you know had several caracom heads there. What's interesting is that that discussion right on de-risking, which is one that the US and US banks never want to really talk about, materialized because of Caribbean leaders in 2019, going to Washington meeting with several members of Congress, sitting in these offices explaining the de-risking issue but doing it in a way that describes how this issue affects US interests. So framing this issue and how it affects US interests a couple years later leads to a financial access roundtable in Barbados with US banks and members of Congress now paying particular attention to a region that they oftentimes neglect. And then the final thing that I'll mention is, you know, we talk, at least in the Caribbean, we talk a lot about sort of caracom integration, economic integration. What the book has really brought to my attention is what are some of the challenges that the caracom countries themselves are facing in their own integration, right? We talk about this asymmetrical relationships and looking at relational-wise. It's maybe there is a reason that countries like Antigua and Dominica and St. Vincent don't always align foreign policies or align their economic policies with a country like Jamaica, which relative to the United States has a small economy, but relative to Antigua is a much bigger economy. And this can lead to several integration challenges that we see in caracom and why, you know, we see these, yes, we see these big collective statements on things like climate change in the pandemic, but when it comes to sort of, you know, getting rid of trade barriers, for example, that's not exactly the case. So I think this book really does help us look at a very nuanced level, even in smaller regions, to just sort of generalize and say, okay, Caribbean countries are all small. They're all going to vote together. That's not exactly the case. You look at OES voting records, you look at UN voting records most recently when it comes to sort of Russia's war in the Ukraine. You know, we're seeing these sort of discrepancies and I think this book is really helping us understand why that's the case. Well, Tom, you may want to respond to more of what Emily and Wazim have been talking about, but since Wazim raised the issue of Russia's war against Ukraine. I do want to ask you, you know, I mean, a small states nightmare is to have a large neighbor invade it and try to topple its government or try to take its territory and this war is is horrific. And we've seen varied, as Wazim was just noting, there are varied reactions to it across the world. And I think in the US, a lot of our focus has been on the unity of the Euro-Atlantic community and the way that NATO has responded. We have seen variation in reaction, especially across the global south. And, you know, just curious why some countries seem so ambivalent about siding with those countries that feel like, you know, Ukraine needs every amount of help it can get to defend itself against this brutality. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a fascinating question because it's sort of the canary in the coal mine argument that I enunciated and sort of the role of those international norms on one level one would point to those norms and say small states should be the strongest defender of the strongest defenders of norms on territorial integrity for, for example, precisely because because they lack capabilities to defend themselves from a great power or great power invasion on on their own. However, this is where I think the sort of moving away from treating small states as, as, as a category across which we should expect uniform behaviors and putting small states in the context of their own of their relationships is is really important. And when you do that you might start to see some different features of of small states responses to this crisis so some of those might be concerns about about other kind of international norms a lot of small states are concerned about the use of statecraft for example in the way that that could that that could that that could affect them being the targets of sanctions for example. But they also of course have varied relationships with the states involved whether that's Russia directly, or whether that's that's with, or whether that's with with China which is also of course had a more ambivalent to supportive attitude to Russia, but there's another aspect that I think where I think thinking about asymmetry is is is really important to understanding this, this, this conflict, which is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has often been read, and we've spent a lot of time talking in terms of Russia NATO relations, and that's understandable given the concern about about nuclear escalation. But also when we think about about the Russian Ukrainian relationship as as a as a symmetrical. I think we can start to understand a lot of the patterns of misperceptions that have existed in that relationship, where, you know, for a large power like Russia in this case, security is it under understands it is often about deference from from the small state right but to the smaller state and Ukraine is you know not not a typical small state by by any sense but but but to the smaller state, the security is existential. And so this leads to to really different patterns of perception of the same asymmetrical relationship. The other aspect that that I think is worth highlighting is it show looking at at Ukraine's response. I think our own resolve and capacities have have been important, but it's also been very effective in in in turning to relationships with other powers. Right. That is, it has not been a passive recipient of aid from NATO it has not been a passive recipient of sort of outside narratives about the about the Russian invasion. It has been really active in shaping those relationships in shaping that narrative, and in using those relationships to derive and bolster its own capabilities to resist the invasion. Okay, there is an audience question that I want to turn to in a second but I'm just sticking on this point for a minute just curious Emily. As you think about resilience and you think about the, the countries that you work with and, and their, their need to have something done about climate change. I mean one of the features of this war at least within Europe is there's a lot of interesting dependence on Russian energy supplies and potentially, you know, shifting the way Europe thinks about energy in ways that might actually have beneficial impact for for the future contours of and trajectory and I'm just curious whether, sort of, as you look at this, you know, sort of ways in which countries that really need relief from the impact of climate change may end up having some hope that that out of this war that that Europe's behavior at least might change with respect to the use of fossil fuels. Yeah, I mean, that would be, that would be great. I'm not sure we're quite at the, I'm not sure that leaders within Europe are quite ready to take those kind of decisions I mean the UK has just released an energy policy which is much more focused on nuclear energy than I think any of us working in the sector expected, which is both problematic, you know as a short term strategy to in terms of reducing dependence on oil, putting pressure on Russia not that the UK is hugely dependent on oil or gas from Russia, but it doesn't meet the kind of longer term climate mitigation or reducing greenhouse gas emission goals either. So I don't think we're sort of seeing, we're not seeing the kind of opportunity being taken up to really accelerate those investments which it could be and I'm still not entirely clear why there isn't the kind of right, we're not in the right kind of political moment to take those kind of decisions I think it's, you know, it's certainly related to the fact that we're coming out of off the kind of a huge amount of government spending and increasing debt due to the pandemic and that's making things, you know, difficult for governments who want to, who do have kind of ambitious agendas around renewable energy and achieving net zero carbon emissions but yeah I think I think you know it could be a great opportunity but I think the same thing was said about you know during the pandemic as well about building back better right and didn't really materialise in the US either as a set of really kind of coherent and ambitious policies. I think the other thing is of course, you know in the meantime, what small line developing states really need as well as obviously the commitments around renewable energy is the commitment to spend more in helping them to adapt and to kind of absorb the impacts of climate change and again I don't think it's a particularly conducive environment to increasing those budgets. But, you know, we live in a world where there isn't a choice anymore it's not, you know, there's not a perfect moment and it's not one thing or the other but hopefully, you know, with all of this going on it won't drown out those voices and one thing that I've just wanted to mention in relation to that interestingly in the UK and we do see it in other countries as well is that bringing together the kind of foreign policy and development agendas and we saw a merger. The other wonderful last of the of our department for international development and the foreign office into kind of one, one department is that there's actually that's actually brought about kind of greater interest in from the UK government in small and developing states because as a foreign policy issue, there's more potential kind of interest in small states through the kind of opportunity, the sort of positive relationship that the UK can have with, you know, particularly former colonies islands in the Pacific and Caribbean and the kind of soft power that that can generate and trading relationships post Brexit and other kind of opportunities as the foreign office would see it, which is not definitely not what we were seeing before from the Department for international development as a separate unit who would really not interested in small countries with small populations in terms of their kind of the kinds of targets that are important to a development that is build the resilience of X million people or some such goal, in which case, you know, small states are not going to help them much in achieving those goals. We're seeing a lot more interest now, in fact, despite the, the current climate and, and, and the war in the UK knows actually growing interest in from this smallish island in other islands around the world. So Tom, there's a question here from Anne. When does a small state stop being a state in traditional terms of what constitutes a state. So I'm actually going to broaden that out and just ask you to talk a little bit about sort of the categories that you use. Especially as we sort of think about, I mean, there are there are the states in the international system that have their seat at the United Nations. There's a country like Taiwan that is able to play a role in certain international organizations, not in others is recognized by some countries not others particularly challenging small states that want to recognize Taiwan, but you know, China puts tremendous pressure on them and their entities like Kurdistan, which, you know, receives support but is not, you know, an independent state is a, you know, as an entity as a region. I mean, how do we, how do we think conceptually about these issues related to what it is to be a state what it is to be a small state. Yeah, I mean, obviously it's sort of it's a combined concept in that point we have to think about stateness and and smallness. And sort of the stateness aspect and I'm glad to have this question because that's the aspect that is more often I think taken for granted in this conversation that is, you know, we, we know what is a state that is the certain usually international legal recognition is understood to sort of conferring conferring statehood, you know, the marker today is as Jim mentioned sort of being a member of the United Nations is is seen as as the sign that you've made it effectively as as as a state. You know, some of these borderline cases sometimes referred to as de facto states or quasi states, where the state often has a lot of what we would consider the domestic attributes of statehood it has a population a territory of government, etc. It has little or no international recognition. And I think, you know, from the perspective of thinking about small states, those cases are really interesting because they, they highlight the costs and benefits of sovereignty. And a lot of those states or quasi states de facto states are working really hard to attain international recognition to get that that sort of international legitimacy, because it confers upon them, a much greater ability to participate in international relations opens up different types of of international finance and development finance and, despite what we see happening in Ukraine now. It's linked to a very high level of what's referred to as extantism if once you once you exist as as a state you usually continue to to exist as as as a state. Um, so in the book I'm mostly talking about states that have that level of international recognition and I talk a little bit about why, why I think that that matters. And in some other work I've looked at sort of how these, how these de facto states engage in relations with one another and why it is that that that some small states might choose to recognize, say, Taiwan, in ways that go beyond I think the sort of the pure material benefits that Taiwan might try to provide to to to its allies. Just to shift to the other aspect of that concept which is smallness, the idea of smallness and what is a small state is also dealt with and in really different ways, both in practice and and and in our scholarship so you know there are definitions of, of what is a small state in diplomatic practice and they're often very population focused. So, you know, in some IOs that is a population of 1 million or 1.5 million, the UN has a forum on small states that nominally is 10 million, the population of 10 million that also includes a few states that are a bit, a bit larger than that. And this is what I kind of think of as the category approach to thinking about what a small state is in the book. And this is a bit of it's it's a shift and you know for some maybe a bit of a dodge. What I do is I'm actually thinking about about asymmetrical relationships and thinking about small states as the as as as states that are the the materially smaller weaker partner in relationships where there's a big material disparity this is kind of your traditional great power, non great power relationship. And you know I think that that allows me to do certain things in the book in terms of trying to look at and compare types of relationships. It's not perfect for all uses and I mean I think this isn't is an area where we're both, you know, Emily and was he might have different views of what of how we should constitute a small state because in a lot of examples that sort of smallness on its own can it can matter when a state is can can field only quite a small diplomatic service it can field only quite a small foreign service. And that means that it may struggle to have a representative at all of the different international organizations or the many many conversations that are happening around the UN. It may struggle to have a representative at all of those, even though it's interest are play, because it's it's foreign services too small, you know, it cannot feel, it cannot afford to field a foreign service big enough to do some of those things to maybe take the advantage of some of the opportunities that I tried to highlight that that might exist for small states in in certain types of cases. And so that really forces those states to prioritize and to make difficult choices about where they're going to stand send their ideas and how they're going to commit their, their, their resources so now I think both of those elements sort of smallness and stateness matter quite a lot and so those are that's a little bit about kind of how I made made made the choices that I did and in conceptualizing small states and in that way but you know, like with any concept there are different ways to approach it which might capture some things and and and miss others. Thanks. Well, so there's a question here from Maurizio. What kinds of strategies are small states deploying and then in parentheses emulation creativity, etc. So that they get international attention maybe we'll focus on this emulation. So part of this question maybe start with was seen sort of. How do you see small states sort of learning from one another learning from successes and failures in the international system as they sort of plot their own strategies. Yeah, I think that's a great question. Um, you know, I see that. Emily had mentioned the success of particularly Caribbean leaders that, you know, the way reform related sort of how we think about climate change and, and Tom mentions it in the book and I see that Caribbean countries are taking the same approach to other global issues, right we saw it during the pandemic right using the UN using the WHO as international platforms, you know specifically Prime Minister Motley of Barbados, using this as a platform. So basically talk about, you know, the pandemic in the way that we have been talking about climate change for the past 20, 30 odd years. Now we're seeing it, you know, with Russia's war in Ukraine, you know, yes, Russia's Russian Ukraine that's on the other side of the world for the Caribbean countries but now the conversation is shifted to high energy prices and so high, you know, high energy food prices. And so then using this similar strategy of a small countries that like like Tom just mentioned you might not be able to take advantage of some of the other diplomatic avenues for example, if you're a Caribbean ambassador in Washington DC you're often also the permanent representatives the oh yes or the non resident ambassador to Mexico which means that you you simply don't have the resources or the time or the bandwidth to to work with all three of these countries or organizations. So that means that global platforms like the UN now become much more important right there's much more emphasis on how you can use it, which is why climate change is brought up. The pandemic is brought up, you know the effects of you know high energy prices brought up, and we're even seeing it in spaces like talking about global reparations right Caribbean countries are leading the charge on this because they're not talking about day in and day out but they're using specific instances they're being much more strategic. They'll mention at the UN if the royal family visits Barbados resist Jamaica this is going to be a point of discussion, using media to their benefit right international media outlets using CNN world BBC world to be able to talk about these issues in a global scale without having to have a permanent representative or ambassador day in and day out, trying to move the needle on this process.  Why is Taiwan still have allies in the Caribbean. Well the reason is they have small economies and Taiwan doesn't really have to do a lot. In order to have an effect in these Caribbean countries right you can donate 10,000 homes to Barbados because that equates to, you know, like 10% of the population, for example. So I think you know they've learned you know as being this is the identity of being small is how to use these global platforms to advance their own agendas or maybe sometimes it's not even advancing agenda maybe it's just starting a conversation. And we saw that with climate change we're seeing it now with global reparations, and I'm sure we're going to see it in the coming decades. Thanks Emily. Your thoughts on this, especially the question of sort of learning I mean you did raise it earlier but just curious. Yeah, I mean one other thing I was thinking about which I think the small states will the small developing states are really taking a kind of leadership role in kind of moving the agenda forward and on something that you know hasn't shifted for quite some time. I kind of alluded to it before but is really around the kind of aid effectiveness and you know there's long been this kind of kind of narrative that you know with enough kind of development assistance over time countries will increase their income or capital levels they'll graduate they'll no longer need development assistance, and then they'll be independent and will no longer like require that kind of support. And I think since have have their experience and the way they've kind of engaged on this topic internationally is that that is not working that doesn't work. They'll graduate out of official development assistance and immediately kind of amass very high levels of debt, and I think they've been very strong on on this agenda and sort of turning back to the international financial institutions, and saying you know this is not working first of all, this is criteria the eligibility criteria for receiving this kind of aid is wrong, and the GDP per capita kind of metric is not the right one, because they can be you know the GDP can easily be wiped out by an extreme weather event. So then they're kind of back to where they were before. And of course it hides inequalities and lots of other issues associated with development but I think particularly the debt issue is important so I think, you know they've, they've been extremely influential in kind of putting that more to the the OCD countries and the main donors and making sure that you know that's now being looked at. And, and there is a multi dimensional vulnerability index, which has been developed and taken a lot more seriously now and they've been organizations working on it for years, 20 plus years but it's really I think in the last two years. So that's really beginning to kind of gain some traction. And that is due to the experience and the way that small states have kind of framed the problem I think it's it's kind of being able to use evidence of the specific situation, more effectively in the right discussions. And, and I think behind the scenes as well probably having discussions with some of the kind of the main donors in the OCD countries to get this kind of onto their radar. So that was just another example that is a really important issue around which I think they've been influential in, you know, putting forward that that very special kind of situation that they're in and making it kind of clear why the aid and development system needs to work differently for small states. And Tom was even and Emily have both used the word leadership, as they, in their remarks and, and reference particular leaders, we've been talking about states and strategies by states but of course these states are led by people. And it matters a lot as we in our own countries.  Yeah, I mean I think this leadership question is, is a really, is a really important one I mean if leadership is important to to to a great power in a sense, you know, it's even more important to to to a small state to be able to recognize these opportunities to respond to the pressures to develop particular particular relationships. So I mean I guess I would say before kind of answering your question about examples more directly. One thing I tried to be a bit careful about in the in the book is actually talking about leaders and talking about the goals of particular leaders because I think it's easy in a lot of a lot of IR but maybe particularly with small states to sort of assume that achieving a goal is kind of a normative good. Right and and of course leaders are pursuing their own particular goals, which are often and what they perceive as as being the well being of the of the state they lead. And of course they might also have things like their own kind of regime survival in mind. They might have have their kind of benefits that they're seeking to accrue to themselves in mind so I mean I think it's also important when we're kind of thinking about and contextualizing the goals of small states that those goals are read through the lens of different of different leaders. So, and if some of the the classic examples that have been have been talked about quite quite a lot are are around the issue of climate change so. So Tony de Brum is an example who's often cited for for something that that Jack Corbett who's a professor at Southampton and his co authors have have termed the competent performance of vulnerability. And I think that this highlights some of the some of the points that Emily and was seen we're talking about as well which is that that small state leadership often has to has to get those two things right has to balance those two things on the one hand, showing and making larger states care about them and why their quote unquote vulnerability matters to them, but but also doing so in a way that is extraordinarily competent that is that that is resilient that shows a great deal of capacity and innovation and so this is something that a osis and and and and different small island groups around climate change have have done have done really well. You know one case that that I looked that I've looked at quite quite a lot and then the historical record has to do with Panama's position and negotiations with the United States. And it was around the return of the Panama Canal Treaty in the 1970s. And so this was a government in authoritarian military government that was renegotiating something that it certainly saw as both in its own interest and in the interest of Panama, but did a lot of really well kind of making the United States reconceptualize the issue of what a secure Panama Canal meant, bringing a lot of other states alongside with with with Panama so kind of attracting the support of first other Latin American states and then states are around around the world. And I think that's kind of a historical example and then just one, one other case that I wanted to cite because I think it's kind of, it still is ongoing but but but, but is certainly of interest is around questions of small arms trafficking in the Caribbean so this is an issue that has been of really great importance and demonstrates a lot of the dynamics of asymmetry where an issue that is of kind of rather marginal importance for for the United States that is arms that are spilling out from the giant US arms market have really devastating consequences in in small states that are around the region. And so there's been sort of quite astute mobilization and kind of finding common platforms, finding allies, and I should also mention small states relationships are not all with other states. They are often with say NGOs with whom they might have shared interest NGOs that can provide resources and expertise, etc, and help them improve their position and so this is another area that there's been been some progress in terms of trying to trying to develop a diplomatic response to to this big problem of sort of of weapons spilling outside of the United States market and and on to and onto their streets. Great thanks well we have two minutes left and I'm going to ask you a big question but ask you for relatively short answer. As I mentioned, there is a comment from and that I'll just read it's not a question but it's an important comment which is, it appears that successful small states out of necessity, learn to use and leverage limited resources smarter, a lesson large states could learn well said. So, the Biden administration came in president, you know has talked a lot about we're at an inflection point in history it's democracy versus autocracy. And, you know, obviously, the United States for the United States main challengers, like China and Russia are authoritarian states. From your perspective as someone studying small states, do you think that this effort to talk about the world as democracy versus autocracy is a helpful way to characterize international politics, going forward. No, I don't. I mean from the perspective of the United States, say trying to to bring states on board, you know, I don't think that that it's necessarily all that helpful. I think, generally, enunciating this kind of mannequin us versus them view of world politics, Cold War redux is is is can be quite perilous for small states it creates an environment in which sure sometimes you can leverage this competition for to gain resources but it also really increases the risks and being sort of pushed to define exactly which side you're on in this kind of ideological struggle, I think really can increase the risk for small states. Well, this has just been an incredible discussion. Emily and was even thank you so much for taking the time to join us really appreciative of new America and Heather Herbert and Alex Stark for the opportunity to partner and Tom. So excited for you with the release of this book and wishing you much much success with it and I'm very hopeful as I was thinking as we were going through this. This session and the fact that it's recorded. I hope it will get much use in classrooms across the world. As people want to think about the role of small states in the way in which they can have influence and try to be more effective in achieving their goals in world politics so thanks to everyone and and have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much.


What's going on, everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards, ripping one box of 22. We need to play a football hobby for Drew B. So good luck here, Drew. Let's do it. There's Josh Allen to 49. Nice one there. It's questionable, geez. The Bills, we've got Travis Kelsey to 99. For the Chiefs, Sunday's best. Anyone know how we got that injury? Got Datwin, hash marks 189 out of 199 for the Cowboys. Nice one there. And 299 at Taekwondo and Rookie Jersey auto booklet for the Patriots. That'll do it for your break there. Drew, thanks as always for the support, my friend. We'll get those right out to you, buddy.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's Case of Breaks.com coming at you with a box of Mose choice baseball. Random team break number 14 with six flawless baseball random team spots being given away. We've got to do one more and then it's Breaksville on that flawless. So let's finish that other filler off. Big thanks to this group for making it happen. There are the teams right there. Let's do the break first and then a different dice roll for the giveaway part. For the break, two and a five, seven times for names and teams. One, two, three, four, five, six, and set. Logan, it's my Friday too. Everyone else is Thursday, our Friday. We've got Robert down to Zach, two and a five, seven times for the teams. One, two, three, four, and seventh and final time. Marlins down to Tycho. All right, so no trade windows here. Just going to show you the teams right here. Here's the first half of the list. There's the second half of the list. Let's just print and rip. There's the print out. Hot off the presses. There's the box. Mose choice. Yeah. All right, so some peacock coming up here. There's Manny Machado. It's Chris Bassett peacock for the Mets. That'll be for Harp. Gee Harp. We've got Hans Kraus. Rookie for the Phillies. That's for Darren. And we've got a Jake McCarthy for the Diamond Banks. That'll be for Zach and the Diamond Banks. Behind Hermann Marquez is a Corbin Burns. And then behind Hermann Marquez are two autographs. We have a Chas McCormick. Rookie autograph for the Stroes. That's going to go to Chris. The other auto is Tony Santillan. Another rookie autograph this time for, since any reds, Ed with the reds. All right, so there you go. Mose choice box. Now let's flip back to the list. Let's gather everybody's names. Let's see who's going to be in Flawless. Again, we have one more of these fillers to go and then we're in Brakesville. It's going to be the top six after six and a three, nine times. Good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, and a three, seven, eight, and ninth and final time. Now sad times, only the top six. So from seven on down, sad times Darren, so close, just not quite. We do have one more. So if you want to give this another shot, make it happen. Seven through 30, thank you. Thanks for taking the risk. We'll get them next time. Top six, you're happy because you're in that Flawless break coming up a little bit later tonight. Darren, wow, you got in. Ed is in as well. Chad, Zachary, and Ed. There you go. So Darren, not so sad times at all. There you go, top six. We'll see you in the next video. We'll see you a little bit later tonight for that Flawless. We'll see you at GaspiesCaseBricks.com.


All right. Hello and welcome everyone. This is Act Inf OrgStream, number 3.1. It's November 3rd, 2022. Our guest of honor is Bijan Herzi. And we're really looking forward today to talking about the Free Energy Principle, Active Inference, and your experience and recent work. However, for today, you've requested that I set the stage with a little bit of context on some of the history and development of the Active Inference Institute. And by way of doing so, set us up for a serendipitous collision in our paths, centering around applied organizational Active Inference and the Free Energy Principle. So I connected with the co-founders of the Active Inference Institute, then the Active Inference Lab, which is what it was called until about June 2022, this year. And we connected after hearing Carl Friston speak with Lex Fridman and got excited around some of the opportunities around this developing framework of Active Inference and the Free Energy Principle, the potential that a unifying framework could help us understand perception, cognition, and action across different kinds of complex and nested systems, and then specifically applying those models in the context of especially remote teams and organizations. And that resulted in our 2020 work, Active Inference and Behavior Engineering for Teams, which additionally added in some systems engineering perspectives, especially related to ontology, lifecycle perspective, continuous delivery, continuous integration, and so on. Also drawing from an open science and an open source background. And since then, we've been on a journey. We've been learning and applying Active Inference and our structure has developed. Today we're the Active Inference Institute and we're working on some novel formalizations of our organizational structure and all these other important aspects of successful, which is to say surviving organizations and organisms. And that's what led us to find your work and immediately resonate with it as some of the finest contemporary examples of experience guided and shaped and situation tested cases of organizational Active Inference. So that is how we came to be excited about this area and use the terms every day and use the ideas and their relationships in our strategy and to come across your work and see it as salient. Good. Thank you, Daniel. Well, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me on this live chat. I've been obviously familiar with the Active Inference Institute. I think it was through the theoretical neurobiology group of Princeton that I got signed up to your newsletter. And I was really intrigued by really the diversity of activities of media products you're generating in order to advance the case actually for the Active Inference framework. When you once ask, actually, is there any support from a governance point of view that's really when we started actually engaging because I always feel that in the area, in particular, not for profit, I like to pay my debts and support it. Now I do think that actually you're doing an incredible job. It's clearly still at a very early stage, which is actually equally true for the Active Inference movement in the respective sciences. So maybe for those who are in the audience not too familiar actually with what really Active Inference is about, it's really very philosophical and very scientific at the same time. There's a mathematical framework underlying it, which has been applied actually in machine learning and actually in Carl Friston's work, which is the neuroimaging work. So it is not just a philosophical concept, but it is actually something which has been applied in hard science and based on mathematical formulas. But when you really move away from the mathematical model and you move more to a philosophical model, then actually a much more general audience starts understanding that actually Active Inference is maybe the only way to engage with the world, which is increasingly discontinuous and very distributed. And I will briefly just say my own pass of how I came across actually into the concept and then maybe a more general audience beyond actually neuroscience, machine learning and biology will start understanding how relevant the concept of Active Inference is of how you build actually your own world model to navigate and in the world of business where I'm from, how to actually allocate resources in very, I call it discontinuous environments. I don't like the word uncertainty because uncertainty is a very subjective concept and anyone saying that the world is uncertain is more reflection and admission of the very limitations of the world model they have. And that's really where Active Inference comes in. So my view and my origin actually of engaging with the Active Inference concept came through looking at corporate governance, looking at the challenges actually boards, leading organizations in engaging with the world, which is, as they say, very difficult to predict. And we look at an inferential model. And when you look specifically at the Active Inference model, you start looking at a system, which is actually a wonderful system to look at. And all of a sudden you can break actually a world which seems to be quite difficult to predict into something you can navigate actually in a wonderfully simple way. And the way I look at it is really at the following six components. And I deliberately did not prepare presentation A because I'm very bad with presentations to prepare them in the first place. But I do understand for the audience, sometimes it's much easier to have it visualized in front of you. So I'm trying really in simple ways to visualize for you in your head and you may close your eyes as you do this, or how you build the Active Inference framework really bottom up in a very simplistic way. Effectively, there's really two things one has to always look at when you look at the world. There's things you know, and there's things you don't know. The second dimension is there are things you control and there are other things you don't control. And this is this is a fact. There's many things we don't know. This is the unknown, which is outside and sometimes inside even. And there's many things which are beyond our control. And now we have to build bottom up a model, which allows us actually to navigate through this. And the way the Active Inference model is built is that you're looking at four states, and I will go into the states in a second. You look at actually a wall or a blanket, which is actually separating the known from the unknown, which is really the inner world from the outer world. And you have a very simple first order principle, which has no purpose in its own right, other than orchestrating this whole thing. And orchestrating means we have only one, one objective we're pursuing. And effectively, in social life, you can actually bring down our ultimate objective as we navigate and we deal with uncertainty or unpredictability. We want to minimize surprise. And minimize surprise mathematically is really a matter of minimizing the error of probability estimates. And I'm coming now to the states. We have an active state, which is really our actions. Our actions actually determine our sensory state, which is what we sense. We have an outer world, the external state, and we have an inner state. The inner state is really our resources in the firm context. You may say, actually, what are the firm resources? Now you look at these four states, active, sensory, internal and external. Very simple. And the internal and the external are really related through a wall, which we call the Markov blanket. And the Markov blanket does really manage of how we try and minimize our probability estimates through constantly updating our beliefs. So, and we do this by trying to minimize at every juncture in a very generative way, free energy, free energy and information theory is really just a measure of error. So, once you see this, you see in a very, very simple way to distill this model now that actually you need to act to create your own sensations, which allow you to actually continuously update your beliefs, what beliefs you have about actually the unknown world. And this is a very generative model. The generative model itself doesn't include anything, but the generative model is just putting into a very dynamic relationship how these four states are being governed. And this is really kind of the theory part of it. When you look at it from a material and from a practical point of view, you can very quickly see for a firm that actually there shouldn't be any uncertainty. What you need is you need to engage in a very active way with the world was a very clearly defined prediction model, which generates predictions, and your actions continuously actually update those predictions, and eventually you will minimize actually the error. So, what that means concrete, what does it mean precisely in the context of strategy. When you look in organizations and that's obviously the field where I have a lot of experience as a as a board member as a CEO. Traditionally, the strategy process and this is how they teach it at management schools is very environment driven. The objective is to say, you've got to analyze the environment in order to define what your strategy is. And the active inference viewers that this is wrong. Actually, your strategy is really interpretation driven, which is effectively by your predictions, it's driven. And then you look for the data points in the environment to either confirm refute fine tune actually your predictions and eventually, if you're not right with your predictions, go to update your prediction model. So what does that mean precisely, when you look now at strategy. There's only one thing as a hyperpryer, talking in Bayesian terms, only one thing which is important. And that's what's your purpose. What's the purpose of the company. And if the purpose of the company is clear, the top, which is the board the executive leadership start generating prediction models of how to best realize this purpose. And then it's really for the rest of the organization in a very iterative model to feedback, bottom up the data points. And then, actually, it becomes a very continuous process. Hence, the title of my book is also continuous transformation. It's a process which is is is becoming integral to the DNA of actually being being in the game, competing in the marketplace. Strategy is no longer about top down content prescriptions. It's really a top down bottom up continuous interactive generative process. So if you look at it, active inference is normatively speaking really, of course, a theory, but it really is a process model. It's a process model of how to minimize surprise and uncertainty in a very complex world. And when you look at biological systems, they have done this in wonderful, wonderfully self organizing mechanisms. And I think the challenge for the business world is to reintroduce and bring to life actually self organizing mechanisms. And the active inference framework is such a framework. And when you look at my work in business administration, I have adapted the active inference framework to how to make it work and what it means in the context of business organizations. Wow. There's a lot there. Active inference as a process model for minimizing uncertainty in complex worlds and a broader theme of using cutting edge developments in as evidenced by your books, bibliography, everything from cognitive science of individuals to organizational studies and quantum mechanics, all these interesting areas. And also really awesome how you framed some of the zero with principles or the commitments that this first principles framework makes, like the separation between things you know and things you don't know, things you control and things you don't control. And of course, all the new on seeing that can happen like a continuum of control ability. So, I guess to put it back into the embodied court. What do these top down expectations and bottom up signals look like are those emails, or what are those actual operational details of this type of organizational design. But first of all, this is a very good question because it's a it's a it's kind of funny also when I did the empirical work supporting actually my theoretical work. It's really funny how companies try to make the case that they operate actually in this way. Now obviously in today's world you have many technology based tools, which allow companies to engage in very distributed environments in real time slack for example is one of those where you create actually you connect actually top down bottom and you engage the bottom in a in a in a very interesting way. As part of my dissertation and the book research. I went into the question you asked right now a little bit deeper and starting to understand how companies in an age where there's many technology tools for massive engagement of how they can use actually the bottom in order to refine their top down predictions. When you look at the early days, it was kind of all about collective intelligence, collective collaboration, how you bring sometimes it was more on a project level. At IMD in Losan, there's two researchers they have created actually a massive intelligence undertaking which was really meant to be able to define the questions in the first place, which actually the base should respond to. So what are the relevant questions because obviously by asking the question you frame something and you frame a pass. How can you even neutralize this by empowering the base to generate actually what are the right questions to do. There is a big well I shouldn't say there is a big movement but there has been a movement and there has been a lot of research on it. And actually they're very big companies from Red Bull to Daimler Benz to many big companies, which have applied it which is called open strategy. And the idea of the open strategy framework was that actually the strategic issues which are relevant for the company to compete in the long term should be generated through the base, the employee base of the company. And there were obviously various technology tools which were deployed in order to do this. I think all these things have very mixed results, because the question is, can you really open to such a big forum, sensitive strategy questions. So it has been controversial within the respective companies. Some companies had really some good input. But on the other hand, it raises also expectations in the employee base. And if it's too project driven rather than actually really integral to the DNA on a continuous basis, usually these things they fail. One idea I like a lot, having said this, I must admit I haven't implemented it in my own companies. I like the idea when you think in a company the very top is the board of directors, and you could see beneath it obviously the executive leadership team. I like very much the idea of creating shadow boards with younger employees, and who face the same agenda, the top board is facing, and you look at what kind of discussion points, what kind of agenda items, what kind of action recommendations come from the base. And I think if you do this in a structured way, it's a great way of incentivizing actually the high potential in the company. But also I think what you're doing is actually you really engage the base to think strategically and to challenge the top with exactly the very same topics they're facing. And by the way, that may generate actually future agenda points as well. So I think the idea has to be definitely to open up. There's no question about it, but probably to do it in a more focused way. That's why I think it's shadow board is a really great thing. I just communicated on this on LinkedIn this week. But I think what is much more important, and this is what the active inference framework and that's why I believe the active inference Institute is doing an invaluable job by starting to understand actually what active inference and practical application really means. We have to change fundamentally the way we communicate. And the biggest problem you have in organizations, any organization is the communication. And whenever I look at the top down bottom up Bayesian brain, you obviously understand that an organization will never ever be able to work that efficiently connecting the top and the bottom nervous system in a way to operate. But we have to approximate it. And all of a sudden when you start understanding the Bayesian brain in your science, and you apply the active inference framework to social organism, man made artifacts. You all of a sudden start understanding how much friction there is. And myself as a business leader CEO chairman. I'm only dedicated to one thing. And from there everything flows brilliantly and I think this is the essence of great and future oriented leadership in this continuous market environments is take the friction out between the bottom and the top. And there's far too much friction in all the organizations.  There is no intelligence at the top. And the top is only as intelligent as the bottomless. So a very key, almost categorical imperative for firm performance for companies performance and competitiveness is really how do you bring the bottom up intelligence all the way up. And only on that basis, will you develop smart prediction models, great predictions and bring them back to the bottom to challenge them and evolve them it's a generative process. So I think what we need to finally say goodbye to. And this is the key message of the active inference framework. We need to say goodbye that you can drive competitiveness, a future strategy by content prescriptions, put it in the right process, define a very clear purpose and follow a first order principle to orchestrate everything which is free energy minimization, as I said before, in information theoretical terms, free energy is nothing but a measure of error. So all we want to do is measure the error between our predictions and the present states, we notice. And once you follow that process, you set free an organization. I gave an example in my book, which is about actually when you do the budget. And right now again in October, November is the budgeting period for companies to set the budget for the next year. Again, you're facing notes and unknowns. You're facing issues you control. There's other issues you don't control. And the management team is challenged to put a budget together. The only way they can deal with the unknown is by defining actions they believe can generate the right stimuli to actually update their prediction models in a continuous way. So when I look at the budget, of course, I have to look at the numbers, but I'm really not interested in the numbers. I'm looking at the underlying assumptions and the hypothesis. And I'm looking at the action model and the precise actions. The management team is looking to undertake to optimize actually their predictions and to gain more and more control and to turn the unknown into the known. And that's all it is about as we navigate through this world. Be more in control, no more and have less of the unknown. And that's a continuous process. And I think if anyone gets it and gets the active inference framework, then I think we will no longer talk about uncertainty in business in the way we talk about it today. We are really talking more about model uncertainty, but there is no such thing as uncertainty in a subjective way. Lot to add there, but really interesting how you highlighted the necessity of appropriate communications and pointed to communications as one of the biggest areas of challenge. And, coincidentally, also one of the areas for which for digital organizations, the affordances are entirely stated. And the wiring diagram of the organization, so to speak, the effective and the functional causal edges to use some analogies from neuroimaging. Those edges are composable, often digitally and increasingly with augmented and digital collaborators. And so that space of wiring is vast. It's faster than building a physical building or object because it can exist with many different counterfactuals and in kind of imagined spaces. So how do we go from this insight and maybe even some imperatives or heuristics like to reduce the friction between the bottom and the top as you described towards a given or particular organizational structure in a certain context. There have been models, I think one company Zappos has been doing this more in a holographic way trying to really the way I say it in very simplistic terms looking at organizational models and organizational forms. If we do agree as a working assumption that the world is discontinuous and distributed, then I do believe that organizational structures need to be much more distributed and much less centralized. And I think we need to break up companies and bring them into smaller units and empower them and they will be much more performing because what we're doing is we are minimizing or optimizing in a certain way the pathway between bottom up intelligence and and stimuli going actually to top down predictions and that should be the ultimate objective. How can we minimize the friction and sometimes the friction is really a function of how we simplify organization and forms of organizing. What's very interesting when you look there is kind of and it comes really from prehistoric times before even language appeared when actually people communicated in forms of touching each other that the maximum number of a community is 150. That's where you can distinguish with touches and in certain ways. And that's kind of a magic number which has been actually I guess these are the very origins as some researchers in the language field have informed me, but I think it's funny to see that there's a number of companies which look at the 150 to 200 as the magic number. And that's when actually an organizational entity should be no bigger. And if a company has 50,000 employees then it should be really in much smaller units and empower them. And I think that's what I'm doing. My company's obviously not that big, but in my company I have four companies which are quite distinct companies, but I think that's the strengths because they form one unity, but they remain very, very distinct. And I can see that they are much more performing if they were just business units as part of a bigger thing. So they have very autonomous and very respective leadership structures. And I do believe to your point, looking at the form of organization is very critical. I do think, having said so, there have been many researchers before who have been looking at neuroscience, the structure of the brain, transferring it actually to organizational science. And it has been certainly true for biology. But I'm always fascinated looking into biology, how our, first of all, how perception is very specie specific and how we have a tendency to generalize and obviously make it very human centric the world. And once we get to the point that we start understanding that the world is not human centric, then actually I think we will be much more open to be enriched by the insights and the inspiration the biological world can give us. And to actually become aware of the very limitations we have and how we can actually navigate with uncertainty. And there the active inference framework will come in. And I think the problem we have as a human specie is that we are the only specie which has this outstanding power of learning. But we have so many limitations which are very severe and kind of we are empowered on the one side with learning, but we are completely handicapped on the other side, we can't see electric magnetic waves. So there's many interesting theories and some of them I really like that our objective, or if you look at the various sense of evolution has never been about seeing the truth as it is. Our existence and our epistemic foraging and exploration is not about approximating truth. Actually, most of the time we do ignore the truth. It's all about fitness payoffs because we want to survive and we want to procreate. And it's all about that. And that drives our behavior. And you start not looking at things the way they are as much as actually our engagement. We see a desktop, but behind the desktop pixels and many different things which actually create our perception. But what we're seeing is definitely not the truth. So I think unless we get to the point where we say goodbye, but it's very classical notion. And that's why I bring also my book, The Relation and the juxtaposition between classical physics and quantum physics. We have to move to quantum physics and we need to actually start understanding the world does not operate according to classical laws. It really operates according to quantum law. And once you start doing it, I think you have to embrace our existence, but the way we control not control the known and the unknown in a completely new way. And my contribution in the active inference framework is really to say this is something which is immensely valuable to redefining what strategy means in the business world. I know we're at the very beginning. That's why I'm sure the audience engaging with us today is a very small audience. But I'm and I have to say, as you could see also with my theoretical introduction to the active inference framework, it is so abstract for many people for us. It's so natural. And we see the mathematical formulas behind it. And we see the consistency. But forming a book, writing a book, even for the business community makes it almost a book nobody can read and nobody can understand. But I'm absolutely of the conviction that this book that the work of the active inference Institute and Carl Friston has been our great source of inspiration for all of this is setting free a movement. And I'm absolutely convinced it's just a matter of time that this become in a very significant way mainstream. Wow. Well, a lot. You add there the recurrent mention of the distributed systems and strategy in distributed systems reminds me of my earlier graduate school work on foraging decision making in ants. Where no single nest mate knows how many seeds the colony has how many seeds there are out there. What's the humidity? What's the water loss rate? None of the relevant information. And yet it embodies through behavior development evolution ecology. It embodies a solution to the regularities of that niche, which includes like abiotic challenges and biotic challenges. And then you connected to epistemic foraging, which is what we use to describe when actions are undertaken with the imperative primarily of reducing uncertainty and gaining information. And the free energy imperative has a dual epistemic and pragmatic component. So under conditions of high certainty epistemically, the pragmatic component can be dialed in in the special case converging on utility learning. And then in scenarios with a flatter landscape where there's less of a sharpness or need for pragmatism, there's an exploratory landscape where the epistemic value in the novelty can be generated. And so there's just so much there in thinking about distributed systems in biology and in organizations, which after all are biological too. So what are your closing thoughts? No, I think we covered certainly for an audience to get an insight of active inference framework.  I mean, you're going down to a level, which is almost quantum in a certain way. And I can only reiterate that I really would love to see this interview as my contribution also of really firmly establishing the active inference institute as a great force for a whole new way of being inspired by biology, neuroscience, to embrace the world with a completely different mindset. And I think the world is today in a state where it's so obvious that actually we are overwhelmed, whether it's from a geopolitical point of view, whether it's from an economic point of view, and eventually from a psychological point of view, because the dynamics have become very complex. Why? Because technology has empowered every person to have actually a beyond imaginable impact on the whole, one individual potentially, to be, I don't like the word disruptive, but to generate discontinuities. And that makes it actually increasingly difficult to construct an algorithm with not only what variables are part of it, but how do the variables relate and what is their respective weighting in the algorithm to start developing actually a way moving forward. And I am of the conviction, and I see it reading the mainstream newspapers, I don't really read the newspapers, but looking at actually through the voices which come through from the leaders in various forums. They are overwhelmed, and they have reached the very limitations of defining, articulating, communicating their very world model. I think actually they haven't got a world model any longer. And because they haven't got it, they are confronted with uncertainty and unpredictability. And I do believe that the time is so ripe for actually bringing more awareness to the fact of how we have to work on our models, world models, reality models, whatever you want to call it. And more importantly, what processes should be in place to actually update those models and make them better and better going forward. And I can start and I have to say they're wonderful examples which have really, and I want to give this as a closing remark as an example. When you look at the gaming world, I'm obviously coming from the gaming world as an entrepreneur. You have traditionally reward functions in a game. So let's take a very simple shooter game. In a shooter game, the agent is rewarded who shoots most of the planes and eventually is the winner. Let's assume that's the logic of the game. When you look at the free energy minimization powered agent, he has or she has no clue about what the reward function of the game is, zero. All the agent does is the agent starts playing the game and has only one first order principle, which is to minimize surprise. So eventually the agent starts learning in order to survive, which is the hyper prior. You need to behave in a certain way in order not to get shot and you have to engage in certain behavioral traits. So now you have two agents in one game. The game is a shooter game. There is a reward function powered agent and there is a free energy or surprise minimization powered agent. The free energy agent will always win, always because it takes a little bit longer to train it. But eventually it's you don't need to know the reward function and the reward functions are outdated by the time you communicate them. And companies need to understand this, liberalize yourself, free yourself actually from all that friction you're creating with PowerPoint presentations, with top-down communications which fossilize the mindset and the intelligence which is at the bottom of the company. Just put a self-organizing process governed by the free energy principle in place. And once you have a clearly defined purpose, which is timeless, you create your prediction models and the journey can start. And you will see there's no more any such thing as uncertainty. It's only a way of how uncertainty minimizing your models are. And that's the only thing. Amazing. Well, for those who are listening all the way, we expect and prefer that you will get involved or otherwise allocate your regime of attention to active inference and active inference institute and hopefully participate in some way. Thanks for this awesome conversation. We really have so much to learn from each other and from our niche and from the unknown unknowns and from the bottom and from all around. So, awesome. And till next time. Thank you. Thank you Daniel. Much appreciated.


All right, so can everyone hear me? All right. Can everyone hear me now? Is anyone out there a business also studying in the School of Business at all? OK. So I was a finance major, and I minored in Spanish environmental studies. And I'm currently a business analyst at G Capital. I've been there for about one and a half years. And before that, I was in a rotational program also at GE in the Energy Financial Services business. So I'll get into a little bit about what I do later. But as a junior, I received an email from the Dolan School of Business, and it said, apply for this internship at Energy Financial Services at GE. And I thought, wow, that's perfect. It combines my fields of study with finance and environmental. And when I chose my major and minors, I just did what I was passionate about and never thought that I could find something that would combine them. So that was awesome. I went for it, got the internship. And I do think that maybe having the language experiences that I had at Fairfield on my resume may have helped me to get that initial interview, just being a Spanish minor. And then my study abroad in Seville, Spain. And then also just a funny story aside. I came in as a freshman at Fairfield, went to the activity fair. I was all excited to sign up for all the clubs and activities. And I went around and I said, where's the Spanish club? And people said, oh, I don't think we have a Spanish club. So I decided to start a Spanish club. And it was just a low key fun thing to keep Spanish culture and speaking alive on campus. So just having that on my resume, I think maybe have differentiated me from other candidates applying to the internship. So at the end of the summer, I received a full-time offer for after graduation, which I was very excited about. I loved my time there. So after graduation, I started the program, which was two years. And you rotate between different types of energy and different types of business within the company. So you're able to choose your top three choices. And for my second rotation, I chose the international portfolio team. And I basically sought out opportunities to use my Spanish because I'm so passionate about it and I didn't want to lose it. So I basically made it known that I wanted to work on any deal that was in a Spanish-speaking country or any opportunity I had to do anything involved with Spanish. So some examples of things I got to do, I got to translate some legal documents from Spanish to English, which was really fun for me. I also was, like I said, put on deals in Spanish-speaking countries. So I worked on a cogeneration plant in Mexico. I worked on solar farm in Spain, amongst others. And for example, one of the deals we had to do a negotiation with a Spanish-speaking team. And my team, we were negotiating English, but they would have the team we were negotiating with would have side conversations in Spanish. So my team kind of looked to me to ask what they were saying or kind of get an idea of what was going on in their little side conversation. So just things like that have been really fun opportunities for me. And I feel like adding those to my daily work, it's something that I'm passionate about, something that I'm really interested in. So it really helps me to commit and succeed more in the workplace. So I encourage you all, whatever field you go into, to really find something you're passionate about and work towards that. So I mentioned I studied abroad in Seville, Spain. And that's where I really worked on my fluency. I lived with a host family. I also was on the swim team at Fairfield here. So going abroad, my first priority was to find a team to train with. So I found a team to train with in Seville. And that was one of the most intimidating experiences of my life and one of the most incredible experiences. I walked into the team, they really didn't speak English at all. And I didn't know any swimming terms, obviously. And the team was all the swimmers my age were like, who is this American butterfly girl coming to take our spot? And I tried to tell them, no, I'm just here to stay in shape. I'm not trying to take anyone's spot. And it was hard for me to fit in. But they ended up being lifelong friends. And I was just talking to one of them yesterday. So really, if you do get the chance to study abroad, really go out of your comfort zone. It will be worth it, I promise. And you may have an amazing experience. And as far as career is, if you have that on your resume or you bring it up in an interview, you never know who may be the hiring manager that may have studied abroad and is really impressed with your ability to step out of your comfort zone and try new things. And then just some tips. I really, really can't stress enough, networking, networking, networking. I'm sure you guys have all heard that a million times. But once I was in GE, that's how I continued to go to the next rotation that I wanted, was through networking, hey, can I just grab a coffee with you here about what you do? That's how I was able to get my first choice for the next rotation. And then ultimately, my current job, I switched from Energy Financial Services to GE Capital Americas. It's all through networking. So can't stress that enough. And take advantage of all Fairfield has to offer the Career Planning Center, any clubs and activities within the modern languages area, and career fairs, things like that. So thanks.


After the president's historic interview with a growing man who transitioned into a little girl 90 days ago to sell a whole lot of makeup on Tik Tok, the president has transitioned his entire approach to creating legislation. Central manufacturing, outstanding. Outstanding. You're not going to tell me I have too much experience, are you? Certainly not. You're perfect for the job. Great. Can you be a minority woman in order to get the job? No. No exceptions. I want this job. I need it. I can do it. Everywhere I've been today, there's always been something wrong. Too young, too old, too short, too tall. Whatever the exception is, I can fix it. I can be older. I can be taller. I can be anything. Can you be a minority woman? One bold man answers, yes, he can. The president has realized that transitioning everything, that's the key. Your name's Lebowski, Lebowski. Your wife is Bunny. My wife? Bunny? Do you see a wedding ring on my finger?  The toilet seats up, man. For example, he has now transitioned an inflationary spending bill into an inflation reduction bill.  Obviously, you're not a golfer. Just by changing the name. These aren't the droids you're looking for. These aren't the droids we're looking for. As demonstrated by the Inflation Reduction Act. What has that got to do with it? Back off, man. I'm a scientist. Rumor has it that the Inflation Reduction Act is going to start its own TikTok account to fight back against the haters. I'm inflation reducing, dang it, says the new TikTok account. Can't you see the dress I put on and the pronouns in my bio? I find your lack of faith disturbing. I mean, honestly, I have clearly listed my TikTok pronouns as inflation reduction. And inflation reduction is how I demand to be addressed.  Whatever that is, I don't even know anymore, but that's what you are. Just like that, our inflation problem is solved. And I say we fight back! Are you with me? Yeah or nay? Which one means yes? Or if not solved, unaddressed. Or possibly not unaddressed, but rather inaddressed and outlawed from discussion. It's just occurred to me we really haven't had a completely successful test of this equipment. I blame myself. So do I. I have no sense worrying about it now. Which is basically the same thing, right? Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back. Yep. Let's get ready. Switch me on.