Dr. Maxwell Ramstead is a leading thinker exploring the intersection of math, physics, and philosophy. The FEP was proposed by renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, this principle offers a unifying theory explaining how systems maintain order and their identity. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB The free energy principle inverts traditional survival logic. Rather than asking what behaviors promote survival, it queries - given things exist, what must they do? The answer: minimizing free energy, or "surprise." Systems persist by constantly ensuring their internal states match anticipated states based on a model of the world. Failure to minimize surprise leads to chaos as systems dissolve into disorder. Thus, the free energy principle elucidates why lifeforms relentlessly model and predict their surroundings. It is an existential imperative counterbalancing entropy. Essentially, this principle describes the mind's pursuit of harmony between expectations and reality. Its relevance spans from cells to societies, underlying order wherever longevity is found. Dr. Ramstead completed his Ph.D. at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2019, with frequent research visits to UCL in London, under the supervision of the world’s most cited neuroscientist, Professor Karl Friston (UCL). Pod: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/machinelearningstreettalk/episodes/Dr--MAXWELL-RAMSTEAD---The-Physics-of-Survival-e2704fa https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=ILpGOMkAAAAJ&hl=fr https://spatialwebfoundation.org/team/maxwell-ramstead/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwell-ramstead-43a1991b7/ https://twitter.com/mjdramstead Interviewer: Keith Duggar (Ph.D MIT) TOC: 00:00:00 - Intro to Maxwell 00:03:34 - FEP 00:14:42 - Markov Blankets 00:36:49 - Verses AI / Applications of FEP 00:51:29 - Potential issues with deploying FEP 00:56:24 - Shared knowledge graphs 01:00:03 - XRisk / Ethics 01:10:31 - Strength of Verses 01:14:04 - Misconceptions about FEP, Physics vs philosophy/criticism 01:30:15 - Emergence / consciousness ​ References: Principia Mathematica https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30567249049 Andy Clark's paper "Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2013) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23663408/ "Math Does Not Represent" by Erik Curiel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA_T20HAzyY A free energy principle for generic quantum systems (Chris Fields et al) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.15242.pdf Designing explainable artificial intelligence with active inference https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04025 Am I Self-Conscious? (Friston) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00579/full The Meta-Problem of Consciousness https://philarchive.org/archive/CHATMO-32v1 The Map-Territory Fallacy Fallacy https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.06924 A Technical Critique of Some Parts of the Free Energy Principle - Martin Biehl et al https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.06408 WEAK MARKOV BLANKETS IN HIGH-DIMENSIONAL, SPARSELY-COUPLED RANDOM DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS - DALTON A R SAKTHIVADIVEL https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.07620.pdf