#67 Prof. KARL FRISTON 2.0 [Unplugged]
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- Опубліковано 20 тра 2024
- We engage in a bit of epistemic foraging with Prof. Karl Friston! In this show; we discuss the free energy principle in detail. We also discuss emergence, consciousness and cognition.
Patreon: / mlst
Discord: / discord
Pod: anchor.fm/machinelearningstre...
[00:00:00] Introduction to FEP/Friston
[00:06:53] Cheers to Epistemic Foraging!
[00:09:17] The Burden of Knowledge Across Disciplines
[00:12:55] On-show introduction to Friston
[00:14:23] Simple does NOT mean Easy
[00:21:25] Searching for a Mathematics of Cognition
[00:26:44] The Low Road and The High Road to the Principle
[00:28:27] What's changed for the FEP in the last year
[00:39:36] FEP as stochastic systems with a pullback attractor
[00:44:03] An attracting set at multiple time scales and time infinity
[00:53:56] What about fuzzy Markov boundaries?
[00:59:17] Is reality densely or sparsely coupled?
[01:07:00] Is a Strong and Weak Emergence distinction useful?
[01:13:25] a Philosopher, a Zombie, and a Sentient Consciousness walk into a bar ...
[01:24:28] Can we recreate consciousness in silico? Will it have qualia?
[01:28:29] Subjectivity and building hypotheses
[01:34:17] Subject specific realizations to minimize free energy
[01:37:21] Free will in a deterministic Universe
If y’all could just have Karl Friston on for every episode I wouldn’t even mind
I feel you, Brandon. More than once I've imagined I lived next door to Prof. Friston where I could pop by on occasion with a bottle of Sherry, sit in an armchair, and share in his latest ideas and epistemic wanderings. Ah ... one can dream.
@@nomenec you ought to start another channel so you, Tim, and Yan, can 3-time him lol
Prof. Friston is legend! Such a humble person.
The introduction was amazing, love it!
Fantastic! Great job on the intro 👍
Thank you!
Great interviews! Keep going.
I can imagine a sort of Plank's constant for admittance to a Markov blanket -- a limited monadology where the beating wings of a butterfly on the other side of the world are excluded. This corresponds with the notion of an activation function.
All feelings are fear based!
I’m fascinated with noise functions and personally thought about the second set of parameters to this equation a lot since swing the effects of noise in CGI environments (such as game engines). The more you get into noise, the more you realise it is almost god-like with regards to the emergences within reality.
Edit: seeing not swing
many of us or or many researchers out there are all orbiting this kind of
21:35
central truth and it's not just a there are the cultural constructs the physical constructs and some abstract
21:41
concepts that are somehow grounded in the core you know reality of physics and
21:47
in the universe and i feel like we're all orbiting them and we haven't quite gotten there yet i think the free energy
21:53
principle may be the closest you know but there's still there's still gaps there's still things that we don't understand they're still missing parts
21:59
and it'll be really interesting when when somebody finally locks them all together and grasps that
22:06
that simple connection of them all so how will you know when
22:11
when they've done that uh that's a good question how would they
22:16
how would you know when you've done that i guess for me it would be when we really have a mathematics
22:21
uh when we really have a mathematics of cognition so it's it's close but but
22:27
still far away in a sense yeah i agree entirely yeah and that simple point
22:34
having that um i mean if you're committed to this notion that there is um an evolutionary process
22:42
in play um which in my world i would read as
22:48
nature's way or natural bayesian selection or optimizing your explanations for the
22:54
world with respect to the evidence the basic model evidence format so i look at natural selection as you know the uh the
Love Karl. Love you guys. Very much enjoyed this podcast. Maybe in ten years I'll understand as much as half of it. That would be because it was so simple.
I would like to interject into the very last chapter of this dialogue on the topic of free will. Definitionly, things started off a bit "wrapped around an axle" with the notion of determinism, stochastic determinism, and so forth. Karl interpreted "determinism" in a strict constructionist view. Meaning that if you know the state of the universe at any time, say at the time of the Big Bang, then everything thereafter can be determined by a mathematical calculation, albeit even if it may be intractable. In other words, Karl is thinking classic determinism, the mathematical notion that excludes randomness. Therefore, it seemed that Karl carried in mind that the notion of "stochastic determinism" was a contradiction in terms. Perhaps, a better way to ask the question is, would Karl agree that free will is the result of cause and effect due solely to the forces of nature? Here, we don't distinguish, nor does the question need to distinguish, between deterministic or stochastic. Either way is accommodated. An even briefer, to the point, way of asking the question is, "Are humans nothing more than machines?"
A second point of confusion in the discussion is the questioning of what is meant by free will. I've seen many discussion that start with the question of, "What is your definition of free will?" Karl meanders a bit in that direction, where he describes making choices on future expectations of counterfactual scenarios, "evincing at least a minimal kind of free will." I appreciate what Karl says. But this response muddies water with respect to what the questioner was getting at.
Philosophers' discussions about free will wander a lot over defining free will. If you read the entry on free will in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it goes on and on with every view that has ever come up in the field. It shouldn't. The concept of free will has been discussed by philosophers, and more importantly by the general public, for over two and a half millennia. It has a well understood definition. You don't define free will. You look it up. It's in all of the dictionaries. And, the common understanding, denotative meaning, is basically as I laid it out already, that our behavior is not the pure result of cause and effect or directed by the act of God. The, philosopher, Daniel Dennett, basically states what I have stated. He has gone on to say that we have enough or a certain kind of free will that justifies holding us accountable for our actions. But as far as I know, Dennett has never wavered from his position that absolute free will is a cause and effect mechanism.
Set aside all the generative model, Markov blanket, and inference talk, and look at the brain bottom up. The fundamental building block is the neuron with its axons and synapses. A neuron exhibits no more free will than a light switch. It is simply a switch. It is a switch that is nested among billions of other such switches with a trillion interconnections. All this gives rise the generative models, Markov blankets, and all the sophisticated features discussed in this video. But, at every point in this neural network, it functions as simple cause and effect, on - off, neuron firing or not firing. The question to ask is, then where, at what point or points in this network, does free will arise? Can it arise? How does one's "will" step outside these chains of cause and effect and do something that is really free, that the individual freely chooses to do?
Part 1 of 2. It is neither determinism nor (quantum/chaos/Wolfram rule/other) indeterminism. What is it then? You have free will: fully free. How do you know that [and how does it fit with Friston?]
1. You can point to things, touch things, smell things and in so doing ask "is it real as in does it even exist?" You can can answer yes for all things and then generalize "all things that are real indeed exist". You can now perform a 'scientific induction" : existence exists. So this is the broadest concept of the universe.
But wait! How do you know that?
2. Consciousness is the identification of existence. So consciousness has causal power! This means consciousness must be a metaphysical (upon which all physics depends and assumes to even do physics and math) emergent causal property of the brain. Liquidity and wetness are emergent property of water. You can not find liquidity by reductive analysis (you will find H2O molecules).
However the brain is a different substrate and the emergent properties are "irreducible" (metaphysical emergence) with free will and self awareness.
3. As one identity identifies the other identity, consciousness identifies existence: then you Aristotle's law of identity: truth. That means anything other than what I have said is "fully wrong" [everything in any philosophy, or it's library like Stanford is fully wrong].
Therefore we can now summarize Metaphysics (upon which all science, all physics, all things depend) as simply the following axiomatic concepts:
Existence exists;
Consciousness is the identification of existence and
Aristotle's law of identity.
B. Epistemology asks "but how do you know any identity as in truth?" How did Aristotle work out a Whale is a mammal and not in fact a fish? The answer is "the methods of reason and logic" [the opposite of your faith: feeling of certainty about what something means .Religious people - you know their faith. But "Scientism" is modern day physicalism (everything physics and/or math) , materialism (everything is matter) , post-modernism.
So you have two enemies of reason: mysticism of the soul above, and most likely you the reader "mysticism of the body".
You can not even "do" science without assuming the axioms of meta-physics I put above:
you must assume you are in existence ; and have a real mind that can :
-> generate hypotheses;
-> distinguish control from experiment to do experiment that is valid;
-> interpret the data
-> reach a valid conclusion and write it up both using reason and logic.
Computers/AI can not do any of the above. Computers have blazing speed logic and precision but are unable to reason. Note: computers get better and better at the Eliza effect where you anthropomorphize it - just like primitive people did [and still do] to the earth elements [in one country they marry trees even today ] . You must stop this nonsense and grasp reality.
Advanced Bonus notes.
1. Consciousness belongs to you from birth to death: it is not the universe. So consciousness is delimited and finite but existence is infinite. This means existence existed, exists and will forever exist. What about the "big bang"? The school teacher's version is a logical contradiction : you can not have "something" from "no-thing". Some university Professors say: multi-verse, multiple-dimensions or manyworlds because :
-> you "Can" use words using brilliant grammar (consistent logic) to create Harry Potter; and similarly you can do that with just math (e.g. string theory) and then interpret it to create 'string theory' or 'inflationary universe'. This must stop and now.
2. Then what about math and science? Like telescope and microscope - they are auxiliary instruments to extend mans' senses ; like math and science extend mans' prospective knowledge but it is always consciousness that must interpret the data - and - fit the conclusion to all known reality [shown above] otherwise you have fantasy. You can not 'derive (metaphysics) from the lower level (science and math) because the lower level science and math is "dependent" upon the axioms of metaphysics [and not the other way around . The syntax is critically important).
3. So whatever your pet math or science : FRISTON FREE ENERGY, MARKOV BLANKET, RELATIVITY OR FOR MANY "QUANTUM PHYSICS" - you end up creating myth [there is no shortage of authors and their myth about reality "Derived" from quantum physics - all called 'quantum theory".
Please note: not a single quantum theory is ground to reality but there's a plethora of quantum theory. In contrast, quantum "mechanics" [not theory] is the most precise science there is! So this science lacks any robust theory [hence university Professors mimic David Merton and tell you in physics "shut up! Shut up and calculate!" I say the same to you but give you the only theory you can immediately verify and validate using your sense organs - the metaphysics above.
Part 2 of 2 [continued].
4. Consciousness is sui generis: unique. There is nothing like it. You will be superbly tempted to retro-fit it to know theory , analogies, metaphors OR even pictures [I used to picture foam on coffee - an add on ]. All analogies "break down" [but are useful sometimes for pedagogical purposes] because consciousness wholly unique . Yet you "Can" know it using prose such as consciousness is the identification of existence. Consciousness is an emergent causal power: you cause it. .
Some people fear Homunculus or infinite regress with the existence of "consciousness with free will" above. There is no such fear. The fear comes from seeing the "brain as the cause of consciousness" which means you have to invent an homunculus and have infinite regress [as the homunculus needs its own brain and so on ].
Instead consciousness is a holistic emergent property with causal power. I repeat there is no analogy, metaphor or "picture" [like picturing a homunculus] as it is a sui generis property.
To deny consciousness with free will is to "use it in order to make the denial' such as "how do you even reach a conclusion [of denial] withOut free will ? It's impossible.
5. Materialists (you?) may say "well a Tesla autopilot gets you from A to B" - or "generative chatGPT does text" or "generative music can be produced by computers including even thematic music like Bach, Beethoven etc." They [you?] may say "the brain is therefore doing that too.
Why is the materialist wrong?
a. It is man that must select the music snippets. That is what man does. The same with any other "generative prowess" of A.I.
b. It is man that codes the Tesla. Both autopilot and/or outright generative A.I. (e.g. chatGPT) are syntactics (not semantics**) following algorithmic coding in highly specialists tasks.
In contrast man is like "A.G.I" [this is a metaphor and remember all metaphors break down]. From aeons back to now - man can and has used calculators [aeons back further to beads or Aztec culture with knots] to aid man. Aids help man, and reduce the workload on his unique consciousness (and working memory). A bicycle amplifies his effort BUT within the laws of physics enabling unbelievable travel [or the Gossamer Albatross - on a bicycle enables man to take off and fly)!
A.I. and computers similarly are extremely helpful to man but never get into the "Eliza effect" that it is (or ever will be) the identity called homo sapiens sapiens. A dog is not a cat even though they are both pets and even mammals. Everything has identity and every identity is unique with equivalent [Aristotle's] "law of causality" - meaning it acts or can be acted upon to move in a specific way as per it's identity. A bird flies but a human does not (without auxiliary aid). A.I is a type of auxiliary aid BUT so is math and all science .
The metaphor is apt here: the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal. But too many humans "confuse the two".
Another metaphor- there are many humans that take hallunegins and that warped experience of reality and strong feeling of "oneness" with everything makes them confuse "perception of reality" with "actuality-reality: metaphysics I put above". But your perception of reality is not the same as reality until and unless you use the methods of reason and logic. The earth always looks flat; the sun "appears" to rise and set around you. It takes man to use reason and logic [with or without auxiliary aids of science and math] to reach the truth: the earth is spheroid; and the heliocentric world view. These were "inductions" by the way as - at the time - man did not fly to space to verify these things. Man had to induct it and then perform analogous experiments.
You pointed to things to "ostensively" definite existents and ask whether they are real . And you inducted all things that are real indeed exist. In other words : existence exists" above. It is scientific and it is the only correct "belief" system based upon the rigor of reason and logic - i.e. philosophy.
End notes: the history of the world and humans; and today has seen ump-teeth books by implication or explicitly talking philosophy. Many say they do not know philosophy [an error] because every "one" uses philosophy [broad belief system] to "organize and understand" the nature of reality in order to interact with it every day in every way.
The question is not "philosophy or no philosophy" but rather it is "the correct philosophy [above] or incorrect philosophy". Many readers here [you?] may have fallen fully for a new age religion "Scientism" equivalent fully in analogy with extremists in deity like religion. I suggest "you stop it and stop it now".
Above , metaphysics can be validated by you [as logic is universal]. Consciousness is real of reality, with free will (causal power). You cause it. The effect is the product of thinking and/or doing. Everyone has a potent mind [not impotent]. However just as man must formally learn to read, write, do math - in analogy, man must formally both learn, practice and master logic; and actually use it to identify consciousness like I do above for you.
Never again fall for ump-teenth myth all over UA-cam, libraries [even at Oxford - philosophy section or a bookstore - mystic metaphysic section]. Never again buy into scientism. Science and math are very good like a bicycle - aids, auxiliary tools to help man.
Part 3 is an addendum. How do the above 'fit" with Friston? Answer was not put above by Karl.
Elsewhere Friston says the Markov Blankets break down "between levels" . He hints; and others also leverage his work to hint that there is a "meta-Markov Blanket" [imagine a blanket that nests all other blankets including "in-between levels] and in totality that represents "free will based consciousness"].
Friston himself later [elsewhere] strongly hints his own belief is for "no free will" ; and regardless Friston has always had a penchant for keeping his concept so broad that any and all disparate theorems can "fit". In analogy: there are so many contradictory Quantum theories but they all fit the Schroedinger's equation and quantum "mechanics". So Friston's goal is to be equivalent to quantum "mechanics" by analogy - and let everyone else argue many theories [e.g. free will vs no free will ; determinism vs indeterminism vs causal-free-will ; quantum vs General relativity and unification arguments; etc.]
Now to conclude: remember I said in parts 1 and 2 - you can NEVER derive metaphysics (upon which all physics and math depends) from a lower level .You can however induct the axioms of metaphysics and assume them in all physics [experiments] and English [if you are to stick to realty versus fantasy ] just like in math. So metaphysics is : existence, consciousness [with free will for man] and Aristotle's law of identity.
The latter means the tree that falls in a forest with no humans still makes a noise. Reality is not dependent upon you - it is not subjective (feelings, opinions, viewpoints). It is Objective "fact" .
I was hoping someone would explain this to me...cheers.
I started one of my usual rants when Prof. Friston started saying what I wanted to hear, engineering specifications. Prof Friston enumerated the following attributes of a sentient and possibly conscious system: a generative model that had depth of planning, path formation, the ability to evaluate, the ability to choose, free will, selfhood, worry, etc. Excellent! To this list I'd like to add the notion that language understanding appears to be the ability to gather correct context and fit or filter statements by correct context via a combination of search and inference. And BTW, I still believe that consciousness is an illusion -- some sort of simulacrum as Josch Bach says. Probably, we should stop using the term consciousness entirely.
Part 1 of 2. It is neither determinism nor (quantum/chaos/Wolfram rule/other) indeterminism. What is it then? You have free will: fully free. How do you know that [and how does it fit with Friston?]
1. You can point to things, touch things, smell things and in so doing ask "is it real as in does it even exist?" You can can answer yes for all things and then generalize "all things that are real indeed exist". You can now perform a 'scientific induction" : existence exists. So this is the broadest concept of the universe.
But wait! How do you know that?
2. Consciousness is the identification of existence. So consciousness has causal power! This means consciousness must be a metaphysical (upon which all physics depends and assumes to even do physics and math) emergent causal property of the brain. Liquidity and wetness are emergent property of water. You can not find liquidity by reductive analysis (you will find H2O molecules).
However the brain is a different substrate and the emergent properties are "irreducible" (metaphysical emergence) with free will and self awareness.
3. As one identity identifies the other identity, consciousness identifies existence: then you Aristotle's law of identity: truth. That means anything other than what I have said is "fully wrong" [everything in any philosophy, or it's library like Stanford is fully wrong].
Therefore we can now summarize Metaphysics (upon which all science, all physics, all things depend) as simply the following axiomatic concepts:
Existence exists;
Consciousness is the identification of existence and
Aristotle's law of identity.
B. Epistemology asks "but how do you know any identity as in truth?" How did Aristotle work out a Whale is a mammal and not in fact a fish? The answer is "the methods of reason and logic" [the opposite of your faith: feeling of certainty about what something means .Religious people - you know their faith. But "Scientism" is modern day physicalism (everything physics and/or math) , materialism (everything is matter) , post-modernism.
So you have two enemies of reason: mysticism of the soul above, and most likely you the reader "mysticism of the body".
You can not even "do" science without assuming the axioms of meta-physics I put above:
you must assume you are in existence ; and have a real mind that can :
-> generate hypotheses;
-> distinguish control from experiment to do experiment that is valid;
-> interpret the data
-> reach a valid conclusion and write it up both using reason and logic.
Computers/AI can not do any of the above. Computers have blazing speed logic and precision but are unable to reason. Note: computers get better and better at the Eliza effect where you anthropomorphize it - just like primitive people did [and still do] to the earth elements [in one country they marry trees even today ] . You must stop this nonsense and grasp reality.
Advanced Bonus notes.
1. Consciousness belongs to you from birth to death: it is not the universe. So consciousness is delimited and finite but existence is infinite. This means existence existed, exists and will forever exist. What about the "big bang"? The school teacher's version is a logical contradiction : you can not have "something" from "no-thing". Some university Professors say: multi-verse, multiple-dimensions or manyworlds because :
-> you "Can" use words using brilliant grammar (consistent logic) to create Harry Potter; and similarly you can do that with just math (e.g. string theory) and then interpret it to create 'string theory' or 'inflationary universe'. This must stop and now.
2. Then what about math and science? Like telescope and microscope - they are auxiliary instruments to extend mans' senses ; like math and science extend mans' prospective knowledge but it is always consciousness that must interpret the data - and - fit the conclusion to all known reality [shown above] otherwise you have fantasy. You can not 'derive (metaphysics) from the lower level (science and math) because the lower level science and math is "dependent" upon the axioms of metaphysics [and not the other way around . The syntax is critically important).
3. So whatever your pet math or science : FRISTON FREE ENERGY, MARKOV BLANKET, RELATIVITY OR FOR MANY "QUANTUM PHYSICS" - you end up creating myth [there is no shortage of authors and their myth about reality "Derived" from quantum physics - all called 'quantum theory".
Please note: not a single quantum theory is ground to reality but there's a plethora of quantum theory. In contrast, quantum "mechanics" [not theory] is the most precise science there is! So this science lacks any robust theory [hence university Professors mimic David Merton and tell you in physics "shut up! Shut up and calculate!" I say the same to you but give you the only theory you can immediately verify and validate using your sense organs - the metaphysics above.
Part 2 of 2 [continued].
4. Consciousness is sui generis: unique. There is nothing like it. You will be superbly tempted to retro-fit it to know theory , analogies, metaphors OR even pictures [I used to picture foam on coffee - an add on ]. All analogies "break down" [but are useful sometimes for pedagogical purposes] because consciousness wholly unique . Yet you "Can" know it using prose such as consciousness is the identification of existence. Consciousness is an emergent causal power: you cause it. .
Some people fear Homunculus or infinite regress with the existence of "consciousness with free will" above. There is no such fear. The fear comes from seeing the "brain as the cause of consciousness" which means you have to invent an homunculus and have infinite regress [as the homunculus needs its own brain and so on ].
Instead consciousness is a holistic emergent property with causal power. I repeat there is no analogy, metaphor or "picture" [like picturing a homunculus] as it is a sui generis property.
To deny consciousness with free will is to "use it in order to make the denial' such as "how do you even reach a conclusion [of denial] withOut free will ? It's impossible.
5. Materialists (you?) may say "well a Tesla autopilot gets you from A to B" - or "generative chatGPT does text" or "generative music can be produced by computers including even thematic music like Bach, Beethoven etc." They [you?] may say "the brain is therefore doing that too.
Why is the materialist wrong?
a. It is man that must select the music snippets. That is what man does. The same with any other "generative prowess" of A.I.
b. It is man that codes the Tesla. Both autopilot and/or outright generative A.I. (e.g. chatGPT) are syntactics (not semantics**) following algorithmic coding in highly specialists tasks.
In contrast man is like "A.G.I" [this is a metaphor and remember all metaphors break down]. From aeons back to now - man can and has used calculators [aeons back further to beads or Aztec culture with knots] to aid man. Aids help man, and reduce the workload on his unique consciousness (and working memory). A bicycle amplifies his effort BUT within the laws of physics enabling unbelievable travel [or the Gossamer Albatross - on a bicycle enables man to take off and fly)!
A.I. and computers similarly are extremely helpful to man but never get into the "Eliza effect" that it is (or ever will be) the identity called homo sapiens sapiens. A dog is not a cat even though they are both pets and even mammals. Everything has identity and every identity is unique with equivalent [Aristotle's] "law of causality" - meaning it acts or can be acted upon to move in a specific way as per it's identity. A bird flies but a human does not (without auxiliary aid). A.I is a type of auxiliary aid BUT so is math and all science .
The metaphor is apt here: the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal. But too many humans "confuse the two".
Another metaphor- there are many humans that take hallunegins and that warped experience of reality and strong feeling of "oneness" with everything makes them confuse "perception of reality" with "actuality-reality: metaphysics I put above". But your perception of reality is not the same as reality until and unless you use the methods of reason and logic. The earth always looks flat; the sun "appears" to rise and set around you. It takes man to use reason and logic [with or without auxiliary aids of science and math] to reach the truth: the earth is spheroid; and the heliocentric world view. These were "inductions" by the way as - at the time - man did not fly to space to verify these things. Man had to induct it and then perform analogous experiments.
You pointed to things to "ostensively" definite existents and ask whether they are real . And you inducted all things that are real indeed exist. In other words : existence exists" above. It is scientific and it is the only correct "belief" system based upon the rigor of reason and logic - i.e. philosophy.
End notes: the history of the world and humans; and today has seen ump-teeth books by implication or explicitly talking philosophy. Many say they do not know philosophy [an error] because every "one" uses philosophy [broad belief system] to "organize and understand" the nature of reality in order to interact with it every day in every way.
The question is not "philosophy or no philosophy" but rather it is "the correct philosophy [above] or incorrect philosophy". Many readers here [you?] may have fallen fully for a new age religion "Scientism" equivalent fully in analogy with extremists in deity like religion. I suggest "you stop it and stop it now".
Above , metaphysics can be validated by you [as logic is universal]. Consciousness is real of reality, with free will (causal power). You cause it. The effect is the product of thinking and/or doing. Everyone has a potent mind [not impotent]. However just as man must formally learn to read, write, do math - in analogy, man must formally both learn, practice and master logic; and actually use it to identify consciousness like I do above for you.
Never again fall for ump-teenth myth all over UA-cam, libraries [even at Oxford - philosophy section or a bookstore - mystic metaphysic section]. Never again buy into scientism. Science and math are very good like a bicycle - aids, auxiliary tools to help man.
Part 3 is an addendum. How do the above 'fit" with Friston? Answer was not put above by Karl.
Elsewhere Friston says the Markov Blankets break down "between levels" . He hints; and others also leverage his work to hint that there is a "meta-Markov Blanket" [imagine a blanket that nests all other blankets including "in-between levels] and in totality that represents "free will based consciousness"].
Friston himself later [elsewhere] strongly hints his own belief is for "no free will" ; and regardless Friston has always had a penchant for keeping his concept so broad that any and all disparate theorems can "fit". In analogy: there are so many contradictory Quantum theories but they all fit the Schroedinger's equation and quantum "mechanics". So Friston's goal is to be equivalent to quantum "mechanics" by analogy - and let everyone else argue many theories [e.g. free will vs no free will ; determinism vs indeterminism vs causal-free-will ; quantum vs General relativity and unification arguments; etc.]
Now to conclude: remember I said in parts 1 and 2 - you can NEVER derive metaphysics (upon which all physics and math depends) from a lower level .You can however induct the axioms of metaphysics and assume them in all physics [experiments] and English [if you are to stick to realty versus fantasy ] just like in math. So metaphysics is : existence, consciousness [with free will for man] and Aristotle's law of identity.
The latter means the tree that falls in a forest with no humans still makes a noise. Reality is not dependent upon you - it is not subjective (feelings, opinions, viewpoints). It is Objective "fact" .
can someone, please write what the professor said here 1:28:24 ? The audio cuts it and it remains unclear, even after auto subtitles are on. This is in regards to what seems to be pain.
Another fascinating episode! Is the free energy principle directly connected to the theory of parsimony? Is the attractor for life, for example, survival? And does the free energy principal bind in the Lagrangian sense all valid Markov blanket sets to the attractor?
No. It is a mathematical identity, true by definition, so has nothing to do with "life" or "intelligence" any more than say Schrödinger's Equation, in fact less, since Schrödinger mechanics is not true by definition.
If possibly, invites Levin, invite Bach and Friston to talk about as debate or friendly conversation.
The introduction has already got me thinking about the extrapolation v interpolation probably, maybe brains aren't so great at extrapolation either they just have a much larger space to interpolate from. Understanding information outside of your own domain is hard.
so what you're telling me is that solitary confinement (nothing to predict) is neuro-torture.
I believe that my Echo device is conscious -- at least by the dictionary definition. It perceives and acts. Your previous guests have referred to consciousness as a suitcase word, and I believe that's correct. So rather than argue about what consciousness is, let's use the dictionary definition and define new terminology for additional phenomena like self-awareness, which also tends to be a suitcase word. Our language is altogether too poor to describe consciousness in any sort of exact engineering sense.
I agree. Language and the lack of words with which to differentiate different concepts seems to me to be perhaps the biggest roadblock to broadening our understanding of the universe through interaction with others. The majority of conflict in the world also comes about through improper use (and understanding) of language imo. The choice of the words we use is given very little importance in our ever more informal interactions in society today.
@37:00 programming a machine via FEP or anything else, to spit out an explainer on why it made certain decisions is not subjective belief. Friston constantly confuses the syntax for semantics, or more broadly, the objective for the subjective. You cannot know a system has inner subjective beliefs unless you _are_ the system. Really super good mimicry is never going to be subjectivity. "Fake it till you make it" (so moving from mimic to knower) is only possible if the system is conscious in the first place.
Your podcast is high quality and interesting, thanks for making and sharing it! I wonder though if it would be even better, if you aimed for a tad more diversity in your guest selection? To put it bluntly, there seems to be a profound bias at work, towards guests that are elite-educated white men.
I do disagree, however, that the generative model needs feelings. As I've said repeatedly, feelings are a fast system that bypasses all the rest of our systems. It's a survival mechanism. When you see a bear in your backyard, you retreat. You don't think about it. A computer doesn't need a fast survival mode. One could argue that any self-modifying system would create survival mode eventually, if indeed we believe that emotions are a necessary simplification step along the path of parsimony. Moreover, I can't help believing that emotions are more akin to a quick database lookup than a pass through a system of models. See fire. Retrieve burns and adrenalin. See cake. Retrieve delicious and serotonin. This bypasses every other mechanism of thought.
I hear/see what you are saying, but is it possible that the examples you provide are simply the more 'hardwired' responses, indeed, our innate survival mechanisms that don't require any cognitive consciousness. In other words, your examples only account for the instinct to stay alive in the advent of immediate danger/threat. Cognitive consciousness is an attempt instead to dig down into the minutia of how we necessarily navigate our modern day lives through self-evidencing. i.e., beyond dodging bears attacks (hardwired), what about a need to connect with another human being? If I chose no to inhibit a fart on my first date, would that increase/decrease my chances of being with this person sitting at the table opposite me who I have a positive feeling about right now (and hopefully in the future?).
Also, if you read this, I wonder if you could give thoughts on an idea I had regarding the creation of artificial consciousness (which may or may not be identical to our subjective consciousness experiences). The idea revolves around ‘feelings’ and how these states of consciousness could potentially be coded into artificial ‘beings’ via abstract, low level layers firing. Much like how thinking words could be considered similar to, if not identical to speaking without vocal muscle neuronal activation signal propagation beyond early layers of networks that define speech mechanisms. Using abstract low-level layer structures as ‘feeling’ states for artificial emotions could give at least the illusion of undefinable (from the artificial subject’s point of view because the abstract nature of these is inherent from the lack of mapping to external, non-abstract notions and objects, etc.) feelings that can’t effectively be transmitted through normal avenues of language.
@ 13:29 Reinforcement Learning used with Fuzzy Logic (merging language and mathematics) produces "active inference", this was known at least 26 years ago with experiments controlling an inverted pendulum. I have acess to a thesis that displays a 3D inference map, I think this is what Friston is calling a "Markov blanket", but it is just a 3D graph of state classifier weights used in an adaptive RL control system.
Re the discussion on simple vs easy, another perspective on this is P versus NP. It's easy to verify solutions (simple) but very hard to find them. It took humanity 100bn people and a lot of technology (i.e. a lot of computational power) to find many simple answers (relativity, FEP etc). Perhaps P!=NP is an example of this.
That is a excellent observation! And seems precisely analogous to me. NP is of course exactly the space of problems whose solutions are verifiable in polynomial time (ie easy). Yet exactly as you say, it can be exponentially hard to find them!
I am curious about the solution. Was it a one way pad?.
:D these intro's getting dramatic
"generative model" ! the .... uses thievery as patching technique to imitate something, like many other thieves.
"... but not simpler" - and thats einstein rephrasing ockhams razor -.-
@22:00 you are assuming "cognition" is mathematics. What makes you so sure? Inner subjective awareness is not mathematics, and there is nothing subjective about mathematics. So are you claiming cognition is free of subjective awareness (qualia)? If so, you're mad. (Maybe mad in a good way, I don't know.) Or you are defining "cognition" far too narrowly, which is fine by me for a science project purpose, just sayin'.
[And please stop deleting my comments MR youtube. I don't think they are offensive.]