Not flippant at all, and I think you're right that it's the most compact statement of the thread. Friston is one of the guardian figures in this series for exactly that reason.
The one place I'd push back is on "ultimate truth." My worry with the Free Energy Principle is that it's very hard to falsify. Any system that persists can be described after the fact as minimising free energy, which makes it a superb language and a weaker explanation. It tells you what a bacterium and a cortex have in common. It doesn't tell you why the bacterium can't do what the mouse does, and the whole series lives in that gap.
So I'd put it this way: the Markov blanket tells you what the problem is. It doesn't tell you what it costs to solve it well. The differences between the solutions are where the story actually is.
It all boils down to a Bayesian System inside a Markov Blanket.
I know that's a bit of a flippant comment but it contains the seeds of ultimate truth and maps nicely onto Friston's Free Energy Principal.
Not flippant at all, and I think you're right that it's the most compact statement of the thread. Friston is one of the guardian figures in this series for exactly that reason.
The one place I'd push back is on "ultimate truth." My worry with the Free Energy Principle is that it's very hard to falsify. Any system that persists can be described after the fact as minimising free energy, which makes it a superb language and a weaker explanation. It tells you what a bacterium and a cortex have in common. It doesn't tell you why the bacterium can't do what the mouse does, and the whole series lives in that gap.
So I'd put it this way: the Markov blanket tells you what the problem is. It doesn't tell you what it costs to solve it well. The differences between the solutions are where the story actually is.
My error in stating "Ultimate Truth" It is merely an apparent truth. I might as well be saying a Perfect Infinity. As you say, not falsifiable.
Word symbols that map to higher order concepts. The building blocks of language and collective intelligence.
I can tell already I'm going to like this series a WHOLE lot. Because: https://hamannature.substack.com/p/what-are-you-doing-to-prevent-the
Thanks, Adam. Really glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for sending over your work. I’ll definitely check it out.