An Applied Active Inference Group Practice for Transdisciplinary Collaboration - 5th Applied Active Inference Symposium

Transdisciplinary projects often falter not because of technical gaps, but because of difficulties in communication, alignment, and meaning-making across mixed domains. This session introduces a structured group practice, inspired by therapeutic traditions including Circling which has recently been developed by Guy Sengstock and John Vervaeke. Such group work encourages perspective-taking, and reflective listening. Participants explore the “here-and-now” of interaction through paraphrasing and impact-checking with the goal of improving shared understanding and collective insight around possibilities for transdisciplinary collaboration. We propose that this type of group practices can be understood as a form of applied Active Inference. With…Generative model alignment - Participants continually update their beliefs about others’ intentions and perspectives.Precision calibration (relevance realization) - The practice highlights which signals deserve confidence and which need revisiting.Epistemic action - Asking clarifying questions and mirroring are ways of actively sampling to reduce uncertainty.Shared anticipations - Over time, the group develops coordinated protention and a collective salience landscape.In this session, participants learned the basics of this group practice, experience short, facilitated practices, and reflect on how such methods can support transdisciplinary teams in industry.