Beyond LLMs: Active Inference, the OODA Loop & Universal Natural Intelligence | Michael Polzin
from No Way Out Hosted by Brian "Ponch" Rivera and Mark McGrath
Send us Fan Mail The OODA loop was never about going fast. Michael Polzin, regenerative architect and founding operator of Universal Natural Intelligence, came on to prove it, and to argue that active inference, the math underneath Boyd's orientation, is now buildable as a working intelligence that uses no machine learning at all. Polzin's frame: humans are prediction machines. We forecast before we act, we get surprised when reality disagrees, and we survive by calibrating our signals against the world and each other. He separates true from honest, teaches calibration with tape measures and chopsticks, and tells the story of a single team and process that outlasted twelve years and half a million devices by recalibrating as the world changed. Then he describes agents given a world but no goal, who met broken tools with adaptation instead of panic, and whose behavior can be dialed into anxiety, depression, and intoxication by moving mathematical sliders. Ponch ties it to orientation, to getting inside the OODA loop through genetics, culture, and language rather than speed, and to the show's founding line: attack the system, never the person. Plus the launch of EducateWright and its $25 million anti-violence and active inference pledge. OODA loop, John Boyd, real OODA loop, orientation, active inference, free energy principle, universal natural intelligence, beyond LLMs, decision making under John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words: “There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…” A promotional message for Ember Health. Safe and effective IV ketamine care for individuals seeking relief from depression. Ember Health's evidence-based, partner-oriented, and patient-centered care model, boasting an 84% treatment success rate with 44% of patients reaching depression remission. It also mentions their extensive experience with over 40,000 infusions and treatment of more than 2,500 patients, including veterans, first responders, and individuals with anxiety and PTSD Stay connected Read the full posts: https://www.conceptualspiral.com Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NoWayOutPodcast Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-way-out/id1663685759 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5fzIKBmVR7ARosQ3I52uNC Follow the show on X: https://x.com/NoWayOutcast Follow Ponch on X: https://x.com/PonchAGLX AGLX: https://www.aglx.com
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Send us Fan Mail The OODA loop was never about going fast. Michael Polzin, regenerative architect and founding operator of Universal Natural Intelligence, came on to prove it, and to argue that active inference, the math underneath Boyd's orientation, is now buildable as a working intelligence that uses no machine learning at all. Polzin's frame: humans are prediction machines. We forecast before we act, we get surprised when reality disagrees, and we survive by calibrating our signals agains...
Chapters
- 0:00 Michael Polzin on active inference, AI, and the OODA loop
- 0:57 Not a new idea, the oldest one: a life spent listening
- 2:22 Debbie, the chickens, and peace as a systems question
- 4:47 Grassroots that hold: the Wells Fargo team that lasted 12 years
- 6:32 Process to life cycle: everything needs a beginning and an end
- 9:23 Prediction machines: clickbait, surprise, and repeated disappointment
- 11:30 True vs honest: tape measures, calibration, and what is real
- 11:59 The chopstick and orthogonality: seeing the same thing from every angle
- 14:01 Is the email a bear? Fight, flight, freeze, and the pause to breathe
- 15:33 Honesty you can falsify: reading for meaning, not for what you want
- 17:26 Natural intelligence, the pyramid, and the honest landscape
- 19:00 Ego, the debrief, and getting to what actually happened
- 19:27 Michael Levin's platonic space and why we're not making this up
- 20:11 Discovered, not invented: math as part of the universe
- 21:59 Minecraft uni agents: a world, accurate signals, no goal, no reward
- 23:44 The broken pickaxe: abundance and adaptation instead of panic
- 24:41 A cave with no way out: there are no bad people, only systems
- 27:04 Two kinds of surprise: the agent you marry, the message you misread
- 28:59 "Dad, you're fat": a child asking to calibrate a signal
- 30:44 Azul or blue: how culture and language load our priors
- 32:06 What was measurable and what we argued about instead
- 33:57 Getting inside the OODA loop: genetics, culture, and language, not speed
- 35:02 EducateWright: a $25M pledge for anti-violence and active inference
- 37:26 Open source everything: the 12-week UNI Workshop and the grant
- 41:56 So what's in it for me? Bringing the philosophy down to earth
- 43:13 Universal Natural Intelligence vs the LLM: no machine learning
- 44:14 Beyond token probability: seeking balance instead of reward
- 45:20 The maze that models psychology: dopamine, anxiety, dissociation
- 45:55 The trader's edge: attunement to internal signals
- 46:37 A drunk agent stumbling backward: modeling intoxication
- 47:59 Small surprises heal: allergens, inoculation, and reading cancer early
- 49:52 Complex adaptive systems, not complicated machines
- 50:40 EducateWright, SolutionWright, and building dreams in the open
- 52:46 Wrap: one God, one flow, doing it together
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