Friston's free-energy principle is based on the premise that living systems are ergodic. Kauffman begins his new book with the premise that life is non-ergodic. Who is right? My money is on Kauffman on this one, but what do I know? A World Beyond Physics https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-world-beyond-physics-9780190871338#.XNGVGw1PdIQ.twitter …
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Replying to @evantthompson
Different things, no? Kauffman emphasizes that evolution of the genome is non-ergodic, which is certainly true. Friston only needs, presumably, the evolution of brain states to be ergodic. That's plausible, it's a much smaller space.
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Replying to @seanmcarroll @evantthompson
My understanding here is worse than sketchy, however. (And I don't know why/if the free energy principle would really rely on ergodicity. It's not a closed system, there should be attractors.)
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Replying to @seanmcarroll
Can the statistical properties of the brain's behavior be deduced from a single (adequately long) random sample? I wonder... If yes, then seems like social-devo history isn't relevant, which seems unlikely, which makes me doubtful
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Replying to @evantthompson
Maybe! My only point was that the comparison to Kauffman isn’t relevant, as the purportedly-ergodic things are very different in the two cases.
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Replying to @seanmcarroll
Hmmm... I think the comparison is relevant. FEP is supposed to unify life, brain, and mind, and is under assumption of ergodicity for all bio systems. Kauffman claims bio macromolecules on up to organisms and evolution are nonergodic. Am I missing something?
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Replying to @evantthompson
I think (though I’m not an expert here) that the FEP only cares about ergodicity within some very restricted space of brain/boddy states, e.g. predictions. That’s much more plausible than ergodicity within the space of all DNA or other molecules.
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Replying to @seanmcarroll
@micahgallen@neuroconscience care to weigh in/clarify?1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Interesting debate! I'm at the pub with
@the_mindwanders now, so taking the easy route here and tagging@mjdramstead
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Replying to @micahgallen @evantthompson and
But from discussing the ergodicity issue with Karl, I think the gist of the response is that this is a kind of convenient mathematical assumption upon which not a lot rest. I.e., it's approximate ergodicity in a given domain that matters. But I'm not sure after three pints...
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Can the statistical properties of your pub-going behavior be deduced from a single sufficiently long (or short) random sample? Say hi to Jonny for me.
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Replying to @evantthompson @micahgallen and
The ensemble distribution that defines humans surely assigns a high probability to states associated with socially / physiologically pleasing endeavours (such as pub-going). Ergocidity is only relevant at a certain levels of abstraction.
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Replying to @a_tschantz @evantthompson and
A eukaryote might regularly find itself in the presence of a certain chemical (i.e. N-formylmethioninyl), but their ensemble distribution might assign a high probably to being in the presence of formyl peptides (of which 'N-formylmethioninyl' is a subset)
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