Explaining the Free Energy Principle to my past self

Things! FEP Explained, Part 1 Get updates Get Notion free Things! FEP Explained, Part 1 By @Ariel Cheng Meta Much of this article is basically me re-explaining the content in Friston, 2019 and Millidge et al., 2021, but in a slower, restructured, more accessible way with added context. Notes (important! please read! click on the triangle to expand) Table of contents Acknowledgments If you are reading this sentence, then you exist. What information can we deduce from this fact? It turns out, quite a lot. We can deduce that the universe is governed by laws such that your existence was possible, which constrains the value of some fundamental physical constants. This is the anthropic principle. The key moves here are to (1) make a really obvious observation – to notice that “hey, I exist!” – (2) to formalize that observation somehow, and (3) squeeze the formalization really hard to see what else you can deduce about the world based on it. But why stop here? Why stop at observing that y

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