Some Interesting Observations on the Free Energy Principle

Karl J Friston; Lancelot Da Costa; Thomas Parr

doi:10.3390/e23081076

Some Interesting Observations on the Free Energy Principle

Entropy (Basel). 2021 Aug 19;23(8):1076. doi: 10.3390/e23081076.

Authors

Karl J Friston¹, Lancelot Da Costa^{1

2}, Thomas Parr¹

Affiliations

¹ The Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
² Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.

Abstract

Biehl et al. (2021) present some interesting observations on an early formulation of the free energy principle. We use these observations to scaffold a discussion of the technical arguments that underwrite the free energy principle. This discussion focuses on solenoidal coupling between various (subsets of) states in sparsely coupled systems that possess a Markov blanket-and the distinction between exact and approximate Bayesian inference, implied by the ensuing Bayesian mechanics.

Keywords: Bayesian; Markov blanket; free energy principle; variational.

Abstract

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