3 ms·

Short answer: no! Friston's work is (in)famous for being so vague as to be completely untestable. He has been criticised over the extreme vagueness of his idea

by 9q9 6y ago

Short answer: no! Friston's work is (in)famous for being so vague as to be completely untestable. He has been criticised over the extreme vagueness of his ideas many times, and he has never given a good answer. Sometimes some of his followers try to make it testable as neuroscience or useful for AI. Both have failed so far. As far as I can see, leading working neuroscientists don't take this Friston / free-engery stuff seriously. He's even got a parody Twitter account now: https://twitter.com/farlkriston https://twitter.com/farlkriston He now claims to have the best COVID model based on free-energy. Can I please see the code and form my own opinion? Has anybody seen this code?

sampo 6y ago
Here is some article, and there is a software note in the end with some links. I didn't really check it out, though. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04463 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04463
- 9q9 6y ago
  Thanks. I looked at that link but could not find the code that lets me reproduce the results in the paper. Maybe I didn't look hard enough?
ruralman 6y ago
See https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/ https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/. At the bottom: "The figures in these manuscripts can be reproduced using annotated (MATLAB/Octave) code that is available as part of the free and open source academic software SPM. The routines are called by a demonstration script that can be invoked by typing DEM_COVID or DEM_COVID_X at the MATLAB prompt. At the time of writing, these routines are available in the development version of the next SPM release." In my view Friston's ideas are hardly vague. Hard to understand sometimes, yes, but when I have put in the effort to understand them I have always been rewarded.
- 9q9 6y ago
  I cannot see the "these routines [being] available in the development version of the next SPM release". The development version is a 111 MB zip file [1]. When I uncompress the file I get a big flat directory with 100s of files. Which of those is is the software used in the paper? I have a bad feeling about this. I don't see how the authors are displaying intellectual integrity by not releasing, concurrently with the paper, software for such an important problem public health issue. ideas are hardly vague. Hard to understand The core intuition is easy to understand: brain predicts its observations including observations about itself (proprioception) and acts in a way to minimise surprise. This can be seen as a form of self-supervised learning in the terminology of contemporary machine learning. Lots of people have said somewhat similar things before at a similar level of vagueness. Nobody disagrees that "somehow" the brain learns about the world by prediction and interaction. The interesting question is to go beyond this vagueness: what exactly is the brain doing? Where exactly is the brain minimising 'free energy'? Can I have a testable prediction please? If read literally, Friston's core intuition is false: people regularly and deliberately expose themselves to surprise, e.g. gambling, watching sports, speed dating. Now there are various ad-hoc fixes to save free-energy-minimisation, which should make the theory more testable, but Friston then has to state clearly which of the many conflicting ad-hoc fixes are in place, and explain how they manifest themselves in the brain! Friston has been confronted with those problems many times, but he basically ignores them. [1] https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/#software https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/#software
  - ruralman 6y ago
    In the zip file, see the files toolbox/DEM/spm_COVID* What follows is my understanding. > what exactly is the brain doing? This is outside my area of expertise, but it is updating brain states (whatever that turns out to mean, neural mass activity, individual neural activity), and parameters, likely candidates being neurotransmitters. The mechanism has been proposed to be message passing among hierarchical regions of the cortex. > Where exactly is the brain minimising 'free energy'? It is a global effect, but whenever a state or parameter are updated (again whatever those are found to be) the free energy decreases. If these turn out to be localized then that would be the (context dependent) "where". > Can I have a testable prediction please? The one I am most interested in is, since generative models are the core of active inference, if active inference is true then we should expect to be able to identify such models and setup conditions under which they update according to the FEP, including actions. This is a difficult task and I suspect it will be shown in a simple biological system like C-elegans first. My own interest is in cyber-physical systems. > If read literally, the core intuition is also false because people regularly and deliberately expose themselves to surprise, e.g. gambling, watching sports. Now there are various ad-hoc fixes to save free-energy-minimisation, but then which of them many conflicting ad-hoc fixes? This is the dark-room argument, which as you suggest has been beat to death. I admit to not understanding what the problem is. If a system has an internal model that keeps it from exploring then it would die (of starvation). What states are surprising is all about the priors (that are designed by evolution presumably) and experience. I think it is also important to be clear that surprise is used in a very technical statistical sense.
jotm 6y ago
Ah, that's the word I've been trying to recall while reading the article. Lots of big words, with nothing specific, nothing actionable. Vague as it can be. Doesn't help that the phrase "free energy" drives most people with any expertise either mad or catatonic. Conspiracy theorist have ruined it.
- 9q9 6y ago
  expertise either mad or catatonic. Yes. Unfortunately it still works really well with students, who are not yet knowledgable enough to be able to recognise the Fristonian ideas for what they are--hot air--and who waste their time with active learning before realising that it's currently mostly hot air. I've seen this play out several times by now with my (current and former) students.

by 9q9 6y ago

sampo 6y ago

Here is some article, and there is a software note in the end with some links. I didn't really check it out, though. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04463 https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04463

9q9 6y ago
Thanks. I looked at that link but could not find the code that lets me reproduce the results in the paper. Maybe I didn't look hard enough?

ruralman 6y ago

See https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/ https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/. At the bottom: "The figures in these manuscripts can be reproduced using annotated (MATLAB/Octave) code that is available as part of the free and open source academic software SPM. The routines are called by a demonstration script that can be invoked by typing DEM_COVID or DEM_COVID_X at the MATLAB prompt. At the time of writing, these routines are available in the development version of the next SPM release." In my view Friston's ideas are hardly vague. Hard to understand sometimes, yes, but when I have put in the effort to understand them I have always been rewarded.

9q9 6y ago
I cannot see the "these routines [being] available in the development version of the next SPM release". The development version is a 111 MB zip file [1]. When I uncompress the file I get a big flat directory with 100s of files. Which of those is is the software used in the paper? I have a bad feeling about this. I don't see how the authors are displaying intellectual integrity by not releasing, concurrently with the paper, software for such an important problem public health issue. ideas are hardly vague. Hard to understand The core intuition is easy to understand: brain predicts its observations including observations about itself (proprioception) and acts in a way to minimise surprise. This can be seen as a form of self-supervised learning in the terminology of contemporary machine learning. Lots of people have said somewhat similar things before at a similar level of vagueness. Nobody disagrees that "somehow" the brain learns about the world by prediction and interaction. The interesting question is to go beyond this vagueness: what exactly is the brain doing? Where exactly is the brain minimising 'free energy'? Can I have a testable prediction please? If read literally, Friston's core intuition is false: people regularly and deliberately expose themselves to surprise, e.g. gambling, watching sports, speed dating. Now there are various ad-hoc fixes to save free-energy-minimisation, which should make the theory more testable, but Friston then has to state clearly which of the many conflicting ad-hoc fixes are in place, and explain how they manifest themselves in the brain! Friston has been confronted with those problems many times, but he basically ignores them. [1] https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/#software https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/#software
- ruralman 6y ago
  In the zip file, see the files toolbox/DEM/spm_COVID* What follows is my understanding. > what exactly is the brain doing? This is outside my area of expertise, but it is updating brain states (whatever that turns out to mean, neural mass activity, individual neural activity), and parameters, likely candidates being neurotransmitters. The mechanism has been proposed to be message passing among hierarchical regions of the cortex. > Where exactly is the brain minimising 'free energy'? It is a global effect, but whenever a state or parameter are updated (again whatever those are found to be) the free energy decreases. If these turn out to be localized then that would be the (context dependent) "where". > Can I have a testable prediction please? The one I am most interested in is, since generative models are the core of active inference, if active inference is true then we should expect to be able to identify such models and setup conditions under which they update according to the FEP, including actions. This is a difficult task and I suspect it will be shown in a simple biological system like C-elegans first. My own interest is in cyber-physical systems. > If read literally, the core intuition is also false because people regularly and deliberately expose themselves to surprise, e.g. gambling, watching sports. Now there are various ad-hoc fixes to save free-energy-minimisation, but then which of them many conflicting ad-hoc fixes? This is the dark-room argument, which as you suggest has been beat to death. I admit to not understanding what the problem is. If a system has an internal model that keeps it from exploring then it would die (of starvation). What states are surprising is all about the priors (that are designed by evolution presumably) and experience. I think it is also important to be clear that surprise is used in a very technical statistical sense.

jotm 6y ago

Ah, that's the word I've been trying to recall while reading the article. Lots of big words, with nothing specific, nothing actionable. Vague as it can be. Doesn't help that the phrase "free energy" drives most people with any expertise either mad or catatonic. Conspiracy theorist have ruined it.

9q9 6y ago
expertise either mad or catatonic. Yes. Unfortunately it still works really well with students, who are not yet knowledgable enough to be able to recognise the Fristonian ideas for what they are--hot air--and who waste their time with active learning before realising that it's currently mostly hot air. I've seen this play out several times by now with my (current and former) students.