World-renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston discusses his unfalsifiable Free Energy Principle, a formal account of variational free energy minimization via Bayesian methods between systems and environments. According to this principle, the brain is a predictive engine that is constantly trying to make accurate predictions about the world in order to minimize its own uncertainty. We cover technical details, surprisal, Markov blankets, and much more.
❶ Free Energy Principle Overview
3:22 What is the Free Energy Principle?
11:30 What's the origin story of the Free Energy Principle?
15:45 What's the scope of this discovery? Scale invariance, individuation, basal cognition...
21:50 Definition of "free energy"
25:15 Information = Energy
26:15 F.E.P. dual to Jaynes' maximum entropy principle
27:50 Preferences are built into Bayesian beliefs within F.E.P.
32:35 Is the brain minimizing free energy because it's resourceful/greedy?
35:13 Variational free energy = accuracy - complexity
39:10 Expected free energy = expected accuracy - expected complexity
40:40 Bayes optimal: expected information gain (maximize) & expected cost (minimize).... perception is just hypothesis testing
45:45 The free energy principle conforms to itself!
❷ Surprisal Minimization
47:10 Does a system want 0 surprise?
50:45 The dark room paradox
54:40 Intuiting maximizing information gain and minimizing surprise
1:00:15 E.T. Jaynes (maximize entropy | measurements & beliefs) vs Erwin Schrodinger (minimize entropy | homeostasis & outcomes)
1:01:50 What about winning the lottery?
1:04:20 The Twilight Zone | A Nice Place to Visit episode
1:08:50 2 ways to minimize prediction error: 1) Change the model 2) Act on the world
1:12:25 How do we decide which of the 2 to do? Larger mammals take turns...
1:14:53 Seems like every organism samples about 4x per second (4 hertz)... attenuation/saccadic suppression
1:19:45 So that's why you can't tickle yourself!
1:22:00 If you weren't able to properly attenuate (e.g. Parkinson's disease)
1:24:00 Anecdote from Carlos (fire escape, police chase)
❸ Markov blankets all the way down
1:27:40 Allan Hobson would remind you about dreaming
1:28:20 Non-lucid dreaming & Markov blankets
1:31:45 Is the environment reciprocating or inferring the system's internal states?
1:33:00 The environment is learning about you
1:33:50 "Realize your environment is composed of other things very much like you."
1:40:55 Dissolving the exploration-exploitation dilemma (EETO)
1:45:00 The Marriage Problem (game theory)
1:47:20 Hamilton's Principle of Least Action
1:51:35 Jeremy England's dissipative adaptation (thermodynamics)
1:54:15 "You won't get more fundamental than the free energy principle"
1:56:30 The complexification that seems inevitable (Susanne Still)
1:58:13 Is the universe a quantum error correcting code?
2:01:05 Thoughts on Donald Hoffman's work? Holography
2:03:40 Is there an outside? Philosophical issue
2:05:37 What is active inference?
2:08:20 Free energy principle simulates active inference | The only thing you get from the F.E.P...
2:09:40 If you could give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice?
🚩Links to Karl Friston 🚩
The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? (Friston 2010)
[ Ссылка ]
The free energy principle made simpler but not too simple (Friston 2022)
[ Ссылка ]
Homepage: [ Ссылка ]
Karl Friston: Active inference and artificial curiosity presentation (2017)
[ Ссылка ]
🚾 Works Cited
The Twilight Zone "A Nice Place to Visit" 1960
Truncated 5-minute version: [ Ссылка ]
Midjourney, miscellaneous images
Every Life is on Fire (Jeremy England) [ Ссылка ]
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Exploring Truth in philosophy, science, & art. We'll uncover concepts from psychology, mythology, spirituality, literature, media, and more. If you like Lex Fridman or Curt Jaimungal, you'll love this educational channel.
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#science #complexity #surprise #friston #attractors #brain #surprisal #neuro #neuroscience #cybernetics #activeinference #bayes #bayesian
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