1 hour ago
https://iai.tv/articles/your-brain-does-..._auid=2020
INTRO: We assume perception is a window onto reality as it is. But Oxford neuroscientist Thomas Parr, a close collaborator of one of the most highly cited living scientists, Karl Friston, argues that this assumption has the brain backwards. Under the Free Energy Principle, perception and action are the same process: both work to close the gap between what we predict and what we encounter, either by updating our beliefs or by changing the world to fit them. Curiosity, Parr argues, is as fundamental to behaviour as reward — we act not just to get what we want, but to know our world better.
EXCERPT: The graphic below helps to make the active nature of perception intuitively clear. If you fixate on the cross in the center of the picture, and try not to move your eyes, you will perceive the colours in the periphery fading away. As soon as you allow your eyes to move freely again, the colours re-emerge. This underlines that our world appears the way it does because of the way we choose (consciously or unconsciously) to sample it. Of course, the way we choose to sample the world also depends upon the way in which we perceive it. This reciprocity between action and perception is active inference.... (MORE - details)
INTRO: We assume perception is a window onto reality as it is. But Oxford neuroscientist Thomas Parr, a close collaborator of one of the most highly cited living scientists, Karl Friston, argues that this assumption has the brain backwards. Under the Free Energy Principle, perception and action are the same process: both work to close the gap between what we predict and what we encounter, either by updating our beliefs or by changing the world to fit them. Curiosity, Parr argues, is as fundamental to behaviour as reward — we act not just to get what we want, but to know our world better.
EXCERPT: The graphic below helps to make the active nature of perception intuitively clear. If you fixate on the cross in the center of the picture, and try not to move your eyes, you will perceive the colours in the periphery fading away. As soon as you allow your eyes to move freely again, the colours re-emerge. This underlines that our world appears the way it does because of the way we choose (consciously or unconsciously) to sample it. Of course, the way we choose to sample the world also depends upon the way in which we perceive it. This reciprocity between action and perception is active inference.... (MORE - details)