1) The document discusses Vinay Dabholkar's journey from computer science to cognitive science and references various concepts from cognitive science including predictive coding, the free energy principle, and embodied cognition. 2) It discusses several key papers and researchers that helped establish predictive coding approaches, including Rao and Ballard (1999), who proposed that perception can be modeled as Bayesian inference with feedback connections representing predictions. 3) More recent work by Karl Friston extended these ideas into the free energy principle, proposing that living systems act to minimize free energy and establish homeostasis through active inference based on hierarchical predictive processing.

1. A journey from computer science
to cognitive science
Vinay Dabholkar
vinay@catalign.com
www.catalign.in
1

2. Trigger #1
www.catalign.in 2

3. Trigger #2
www.catalign.in 3
https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/iit-kanpur-launches-new-department-of-
cognitive-science/story-6uMvYijHNbSHa0tdMDYYrM.html
First IIT to set up cog.sci. dept

4. A cyclist’s view on cycology
www.catalign.in 4
“It seems that many people have virtually no understanding
of how bicycles work” – Rebecca Lawson
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html

5. A cog-sci user’s perspective
www.catalign.in 5
Design
Thinking
Mindfulness
on the go
Innovation
Strategy

6. 2006: A freelancing journey starts
www.catalign.in 6
Image source: depositphotos.com

7. www.catalign.in 7
How to go from jugaad to systematic innovation?
Irrespective of culture and strategy

8. www.catalign.in 8
1
How to build an
idea pipeline?
2 How to improve idea velocity?
3
How to enhance
batting average?

9. The Elephant-Rider model
www.catalign.in 9
Rider Elephant
Effortful Effortless
Slow Fast
Analytical Intuitive
Snooze
Emotional
Set alarm

10. Metaphor travels across millennia
www.catalign.in 10

11. Is it primarily an Elephant or a Rider problem?
www.catalign.in 11
https://www.catalign.in/2013/11/is-8-steps-to-innovation-approach.html

12. Build Pipeline Improve velocity Enhance batting average
How
to
sustain
the
change? What to improve?
Direct
the
Rider
Motivate
the
Elephant
Shape
the
Path

13. Is “velocity” problem the trickiest?
www.catalign.in 13
Could “Fear of failure” be one of the
major hindrances?

14. www.catalign.in 14
Source: “A beautiful mind” film

15. 2008-2009
www.catalign.in 15
Source: ChiefExecutive.net

16. Black Swan and Nassim Taleb
www.catalign.in 16
“Learn to fail with pride, comfort and pleasure”
Source: McKinsey Quarterly, Dec 2008
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-isnt-a-black-swan-but-a-
portent-of-a-more-fragile-global-system

17. 2 key takeaways from “Black swan”
www.catalign.in 17
“Do more trial
and error”
Confirmation
bias
https://www.catalign.in/2009/07/confirmation-bias-and-curse-of.html
https://www.catalign.in/2009/01/overcoming-prediction-disability.html

18. Low-cost high-speed experimentation
www.catalign.in 18

19. Doing the last experiment first
www.catalign.in 19
https://www.catalign.in/2020/12/doing-last-experiment-first-illustrated.html
Image source: youtube.com
“It felt as comfortable and natural as a walk in the park.”
--Alex Honnold

20. A view of cognitive science
www.catalign.in 20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science


21. www.catalign.in 21
Design
Thinking

22. www.catalign.in 22
Empathy
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Adapted from: dschool.stanford.edu

23. Problem discovery: the hardest part?
www.catalign.in 23
“Getting people to talk: An ethnography
and interviewing primer”
https://www.catalign.in/2020/12/my-4-takeaways-from-getting-people-to.html
Q: How to represent data from “their” perspective?

24. Why is listening hard?
www.catalign.in 24
Will 80-20 rule help?

25. Perception trap
What You Believe Is What You See
(Confirmation bias)
What You See Is All There Is
(WYSIATI bias)

26. Fast mode of thinking
A
B C
We think, like we see
(fast, automatic, biased)

27. How strong are these biases?
www.catalign.in 27
Image source: TED.com
Q: How is Danny Kahneman different after studying
biases for 50 years?
A: I don’t think my intuitions have significantly
improved and I am very overconfident.
source: https://samharris.org/podcasts/150-map-misunderstanding/ March, 2019, 18:57-20:25

28. Replication crisis in social sciences
www.catalign.in 28
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
Q: What is the problem here?
A: Research is expensive. You want it to succeed. You
know what you want to find. And that creates biases
you are not fully aware of. A lot of this is self-delusion.
source: https://samharris.org/podcasts/150-map-misunderstanding/ March, 2019, 7:00

29. Problem definition and metaphoric
thinking
www.catalign.in 29

30. Are metaphors generative?
www.catalign.in 30
https://www.catalign.in/2009/09/generative-metaphors-disneys-cast.html
Image source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

31. A view of cognitive science
www.catalign.in 31
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science
 


32. www.catalign.in 32
Mindfulness
on the go

33. Tendency to go off-balance
www.catalign.in 33
What if she starts doing drugs?
Hindi Medium trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjkFr48jk68&t=39s

34. Learning to balance
www.catalign.in 34
The biased bicycle of life
Backwards brain bicycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

35. How do I do it?
www.catalign.in 35
Is this the right question?

36. Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
www.catalign.in 36
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
philosopher
“Perception is action”
-- Krishnamurti in Madras 1971, Talk 1
“clarity is action”
-- Commentaries on living I, 1956, p 183
https://kfoundation.org/a-perception-free-of-time/
https://www.catalign.in/2018/05/clarity-is-action-my-favorite.html

37. Is action perception?
www.catalign.in 37
What does neuroscience say?

38. Sandwich model of cognition
www.catalign.in 38
Perception Cognition Action
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
Influenced by brain is a computer metaphor?

39. Is there a paradigm shift?
www.catalign.in 39
https://www.mindcoolness.com/blog/bayesian-brain-predictive-processing/

40. Rao and Ballard 1999: A turning point?
www.catalign.in 40
“If there has been a paradigm shift, then one paper
played a key role at the tipping point”
-- Karl Friston, “Does predictive coding have a future?”, 2018

41. Predictive coding architecture
www.catalign.in 41
Rao and Ballard, 1999

42. 3 elements of Rao-Ballard approach
www.catalign.in 42
Kalman
filtering like
hierarchical
predictive
coding process
Perception as
a Bayesian
inference with
a generative
model
Variational
Bayes via
stochastic
gradient descent
Rao and Ballard, 1999
Helmoltz, 1860s
Control Systems
Signal processing
Dayan-Hinton, 1995
Machine learning
Stochastic gradient
descent, 1950

43. Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle (FEP)
www.catalign.in 43
FEP & Active
inference
Rao-Ballard
approach
Action as
inference
Any living
system
NESS systems,
Markov blanket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sQZeFRjR8 Karl Friston, “I am therefore I think”, 2019
https://www.catalign.in/2020/01/my-3-takeaways-from-karl-fristons.html

44. 44
Active inference under FEP
http://louiskirsch.com/ai/active-inference

45. Is perception action under active inference?
www.catalign.in 45
“perception is a form of action”
Source: Ramstead, Kirchhoff and Friston, 2020, A tale of two densities
https://github.com/BerenMillidge/FEP_Active_Inference_Papers/blob/main/README.md
https://jaredtumiel.github.io/blog/2020/10/14/spinning-up-in-ai.html

46. Artificial active inferencing agents?
www.catalign.in 46
Source: 1. Oliver et al (2020) “Active inference body perception and action for human robots”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l9N972xjD8
2. Lanillos et al (2020) “Robot self/other distinction: active inference meets neural
networks learning in a mirror”
Is it me?

47. A view of cognitive science
www.catalign.in 47
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science
 




Control Systems
Dynamical
systems

48. www.catalign.in 48
Could cycology and cycling
complement each other?
“Cognition is embedded, extended,
embodied, enacted and affective”
“The 4 E-A approach” – Maxwell Ramstead, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKwHX8j-UgU,
25:30, “The Free Energy Principle with Dr Maxwell Ramstead”, Sam Barton podcast, 2020

49. Thank You
www.catalign.in 49