Karl Friston's Unfalsifiable Free Energy Principle

Video Description

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) https://www.uab.edu/medicine/cinl/images/KFriston_FreeEnergy_BrainTheory.pdf The free energy principle made simpler but not too simple (Friston 2022) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.06387.pdf Homepage: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/ Karl Friston: Active inference and artificial curiosity presentation (2017) https://youtu.be/Y1egnoCWgUg 🚾 Works Cited The Twilight Zone "A Nice Place to Visit" 1960 Truncated 5-minute version: https://youtu.be/77ueTRaYTwg Midjourney, miscellaneous images Every Life is on Fire (Jeremy England) https://www.amazon.com/Every-Life-Fire-Thermodynamics-Explains/dp/1541699017 🚀 What is this channel? 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. p.s. Please subscribe! Young channel here. =) #science #complexity #surprise #friston #attractors #brain #surprisal #neuro #neuroscience #cybernetics #activeinference #bayes #bayesian