Active Inference Insights Karl Friston ~ Active Inference Insights 001 ~ Free Energy, Time, Consciousness
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Nov 23, 2023 
In this episode, Darius Parvizi-Wayne interviews Karl Friston, the chief architect of active inference. They discuss the free energy principle, boundary states, and the mark of blanket. They explore the difference between a 'whats governor' and a human, minimizing expected surprise, and the role of priors. The conversation also covers beliefs and temporal depth in generative models, the free energy principle and the statistical manifold, and dynamics and flows in a random dynamical system. They touch on strange loops, the holographic principle, free will, and consciousness. The podcast ends with discussions on self-destructive behavior, imperatives and optimization in the free energy principle, and the philosophical debate on whether life is inherently good.
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Free Energy Principle
- The free energy principle describes how things persist by minimizing free energy.
- Minimizing free energy equates to maximizing evidence for a thing's internal model of the world.
Generative Model
- Internal states entail a generative model, but the model itself isn't physically instantiated.
- The generative model provides a teleological explanation for behavior, not a mechanistic one.
Markov Blanket Limits Access
- Direct access to external states is impossible due to the Markov blanket.
- We can approximate internal states, but true knowledge requires breaching the Markov blanket, ending the thing's existence as such.