So if I get it straight, your main objection is the way Banno presented Friston’s idea here on this thread? Using the "dark room problem"? You find it misleading? — dimosthenis9
A recurrent puzzle raised by critics of these models is that biological systems do not seem to avoid surprises. We do not simply seek a dark, unchanging chamber, and stay there. This is the “Dark-Room Problem.”
But why is minimising surprise the very same as living longest? — Banno
So in your opinion, and in a few lines what exactly this theory tell us about consciousness? Or what it implies at least as to rephrase it. Why you find it so huge? — dimosthenis9
Well, not quite. We want a theory that rules out things that are contradicted by the evidence. — Banno
I am sympathetic to your attitude towards totalizing theories. But there is a difference between a general unifying idea and a detailed treatment of a subject. — SophistiCat
. It gets neuroscience off computation - the Universal Turing Machine formalism - as the general theory of everything it has been employing. It underwrites the whole shift back to an embodied, enactive and semiotic approach to mind science. — apokrisis
it seemed curious that ( Banno ) should pluck this paper out of the past just when I happened to be promoting Friston — apokrisis
So in general, if I get it right. For example in the "mind/ body problem" (physical /no psychical) you would use that theory as an argument in favor of the idealistic no physical nature of the mind. Right? — dimosthenis9
No surprises there. The Dark Room Problem was mentioned by Friston in the questions of a video you posted. — Banno
And in this case the details remain to be settled. — Banno
You read the comments on YouTube videos? And yet you say you are too old to watch the videos themselves? — apokrisis
Idealism is a broad church. But if you mean idealism in terms of some synonym of soul, spirit or consciousness as a monistic substance - one that stands opposed to matter as the other candidate monistic substance underlying reality - then no way am I making any argument in that direction. — apokrisis
Triadic logic says there is an interaction. And then two distinct realms are what develop out of this fundamental connection. — apokrisis
They can complain that the surprise a human feels is nothing like the surprisal - the free energy metric – that Friston's formalism minimises. — apokrisis
but I'd much rather a paper — Banno
Acting on the environment by minimising free-energy through action enforces a sampling of sensory data that is consistent with the current representation. This can be seen with a second
rearrangement of the free-energy as a mixture of accuracy and complexity. Crucially, action can only affect accuracy. This means the brain will reconfigure its sensory epithelia to sample inputs that are predicted by its representations; in other words, to minimise prediction error.
fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/The%20free-energy%20principle%20-%20a%20rough%20guide%20to%20the%20brain.pdf
Look, Apo, I'm flattered and all that you feel the need to make me the topic of this thread, but I don't owe you explanations or replies, and I'm sure others are finding this tedious. — Banno
The familiar gambit. — apokrisis
I stand with the non material nature of the mind, which for sure as to exist requires material (brain) but on its own it's not something material also. — dimosthenis9
Well, you keep falling into it. It works - utilitarianism in action; you should be pleased. — Banno
Which hasn't happened this page. — Banno
If you are satisfied that this stuff also explains evolution and consciousness, then I'm happy for you. — Banno
Note that it's not "long life vs reproductive fitness" with which I take issue, but "why is minimising surprise the very same as living longest?" — Banno
I don't think I'm the only one here who thinks that thinking this already settled is overreach. — Banno
Are we playing "posts-last-wins" now? I'm good at that. — Banno
So all you had to do was tell me you agreed. — apokrisis
:lol:Apo, I did, several times. — Banno
I just made a cheese toasty, using a flatbread that was past it's "best by..." date, but which had been in the fridge, and had no obvious signs of mould. I put on the new Genesis album, quite loud, unaware that it was a rehash of their old stuff. But I enjoyed it, despite it lacking surprises. — Banno
There's the rub' it's just not obvious how what we do is result of our avoiding surprises. But it might be. — Banno
why does Friston command an h-index of 253? — apokrisis
So show me why my choice of Genesis drops out of Friston's equations. — Banno
Because it's interesting, of course — Banno
but perhaps someone who thought in terms of the Peircean collective wisdom — Banno
Then again, if he got something essentially right, then these kinds of big-picture narratives can be valuable as setting directions for future research and providing an insight into large-scale patterns. — SophistiCat
Minimising free energy is a very high-level idea, an abstraction at the level of thermodynamics and definitions of what constitutes information. I think we can agree that consciousness is more complicated than heat. — the affirmation of strife
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