87 | Karl Friston on Brains, Predictions, and Free Energy

87 | Karl Friston on Brains, Predictions, and Free Energy

If you tell me that one of the world's leading neuroscientists has developed a theory of how the brain works that also has implications for the origin and nature of life more broadly, and uses concepts of entropy and information in a central way — well, you know I'm going to be all over that. So it's my great pleasure to present this conversation with Karl Friston, who has done exactly that. One of the most highly-cited neuroscientists now living, Friston has proposed that we understand the brain in terms of a free energy principle, according to which our brains are attempting to model the world in such a way as to minimize the amount of surprise we experience. It's a bit more complicate than that, but I think we made great headway in explicating some very profound ideas in a way that should be generally understandable.

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Karl Friston received his medical degree from King's College Hospital, London. He is currently Professor at the Institute of Neurology, University College London, and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow and Scientific Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. Among his major contributions are statistical parametric mapping, voxel-based morphometry, and dynamical causal modeling. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, of the Academy of Medical Science, and of the Royal Society of Biology. Among his awards are the Young Investigators Award in Human Brain Mapping, the Minerva Golden Brain Award, the Weldon Memorial Prize, the Charles Branch Award, and the Glass Brain Award for human brain mapping.


Jaksot(416)

242 | David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information

242 | David Krakauer on Complexity, Agency, and Information

Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what "complexity" actually is. We know it when we see it, per...

10 Heinä 20231h 33min

AMA | July 2023

AMA | July 2023

Welcome to the July 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreo...

3 Heinä 20233h 4min

241 | Tim Maudlin on Locality, Hidden Variables, and Quantum Foundations

241 | Tim Maudlin on Locality, Hidden Variables, and Quantum Foundations

Last year's Nobel Prize for experimental tests of Bell's Theorem was the first Nobel in the foundations of quantum mechanics since Max Born in 1954. Quantum foundations is enjoying a bit of a resurgen...

26 Kesä 20231h 33min

240 | Andrew Pontzen on Simulations and the Universe

240 | Andrew Pontzen on Simulations and the Universe

It's somewhat amazing that cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, can make any progress at all. But it has, especially so in recent decades. Partly that's because nature has been kind to us ...

19 Kesä 20231h 26min

239 | Brian Lowery on the Social Self

239 | Brian Lowery on the Social Self

There is an image, especially in Western cultures, of the rugged, authentic, self-made individual choosing how to navigate the intricacies of the social world. But there is no mystical soul within us,...

12 Kesä 20231h 10min

AMA | June 2023

AMA | June 2023

Welcome to the June 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patreo...

5 Kesä 20232h 58min

238 | Scott Shapiro on the Technology and Philosophy of Hacking

238 | Scott Shapiro on the Technology and Philosophy of Hacking

Modern computers are somewhat more secure against being hacked - either by an inanimate virus or a human interloper - than they used to be. But as our lives are increasingly intertwined with computers...

29 Touko 20231h 27min

237 | Brooke Harrington on Offshore Wealth as a Complex System

237 | Brooke Harrington on Offshore Wealth as a Complex System

The modern world is large and interconnected, and there are a lot of systems that might be important to how it functions but about which most people are barely aware. One of these is the offshore weal...

22 Touko 20231h 18min

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