Active inference
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Active inference page
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Your model of the world
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An inference is an idea or conclusion that you drawn from evidence and reasoning. An inference is your educated guess.You learn about some things by experiencing them first-hand, but you gain other knowledge by inference — the process of inferring things is based on what you already know.
In the context of the 'free energy principle', inference is "your effort" figuring out the best principle or hypothesis that explains the observed states of the system we call "the world".
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Key take-aways from the deep dive
- Active inference
- starts from what you 'already know'
- processes what you internaly feel
- tests against external experiences
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Deep dive
Inference
Technically, inference involves maximising the evidence for our model of the world.
Because we must provide as much evidence as possible, we make inferences about the world by using ourselves as a model. That is why every time you have a new experience, you make some inference to try to fit what is happening into a known pattern or to review your internal states to account for this new fact.
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| Conscious processing is about inferring the causes of sensory states and thereby navigating the world to avoid surprises. (1) |
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Natural selection
Any process (like you or me) that repeatedly occupies certain states must, by its existence, make inferences. It turns out, for example, that nature's way of "selecting" organisms for their ability to survive and reproduce is based on inference. Each individual is a hypothesis or model of what this ecological niche should occupy and must compete for selection under environmental pressure. Since evolution is a complex system, it should also be self-evident - that is, it will always "choose" organisms that will increasingly occupy its ecological niche. In other words, its survival is nothing more or less than proof that it is a good model for its niche.
Conscious selection
While natural selection infers by selecting among different beings, consciousness infers by choosing from states of the same being (especially its brain and body). An enormous amount of anatomical and physiological evidence supports this idea. If you think of the brain as a self-evidencing organ of inference, almost every aspect of its anatomical and physiological aspects seems to aim to keep surprises to a minimum.
For example, our brains represent where something is and its function in different areas. That makes sense because knowing something generally doesn't tell you where it is and vice versa.
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| What distinguishes conscious and non-conscious creatures is the way they make inferences about action and time. This part of my argument rests upon the reciprocal relationship between the system and the world. The world acts on the system to provide the sensory impressions that form the basis of inference. Meanwhile, the system acts upon the world to change the flow of sensations to fit with the model of the world it has discerned. This is just another description of the cycle of action and perception; for example, we look, we see,and we infer where to look next. (1) |
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Our consciousness constantly selects from our stored experiences those sensations that it considers useful for the situation we find ourselves in and thereby predicts that situation. If the sensory feedback we receive is above a certain level, we feel surprised and adjust our model slightly. If it is below that level, we confirm our current model of the world.
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| (1) | The mathematics of mind-time - Karl Friston - Aeon - 2017 |
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