Dr. MAXWELL RAMSTEAD - The Physics of Survival

episode

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

VAEs Are Energy-Based Models? [Dr. Jeff Beck] 46 min · 25 Jan 2026

Abstraction & Idealization: AI's Plato Problem [Mazviita Chirimuuta] 53 min · 23 Jan 2026

Why Every Brain Metaphor in History Has Been Wrong [SPECIAL EDITION] 42 min · 23 Jan 2026

Adversarial Examples and Data Modelling - Andrew Ilyas (MIT) 1h 28m · 22 Aug 2024

All episodes from Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded16 Jul 2023

Publisheranchor.fm ↗

Handlerec:2107276

Show notes

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Join us for a fascinating discussion of the free energy principle with Dr. Maxwell Ramsted, a leading thinker exploring the intersection of math, physics, and philosophy and Director of Research at VERSES. The FEP was proposed by renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, this principle offers a unifying theory explaining how systems maintain order and their identity. The free energy principle inverts traditional survival logic. Rather than asking what behaviors promote survival, it queries - given things exist, what must they do? The answer: minimizing free energy, or "surprise." Systems persist by constantly ensuring their internal states match anticipated states based on a model of the world. Failure to minimize surprise leads to chaos as systems dissolve into disorder. Thus, the free energy principle elucidates why lifeforms relentlessly model and predict their surroundings. It is an existential imperative counterbalancing entropy. Essentially, this principle describes the mind's pursuit of harmony between expectations and reality. Its relevance spans from cells to societies, underlying order wherever longevity is found. Our discussion explores the technical details and philosophical implications of this paradigm-shifting theory. How does it further our understanding of cognition and intelligence? What insights does it offer about the fundamental patterns and properties of existence? Can it precipitate breakthroughs in disciplines like neuroscience and artificial intelligence? Dr. Ramstead completed his Ph.D. at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2019, with frequent research visits to UCL in London, under the supervision of the world’s most cited neuroscientist, Professor Karl Friston (UCL). YT version: https://youtu.be/8qb28P7ksyE https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=ILpGOMkAAAAJ&hl=frhttps://spatialwebfoundation.org/team/maxwell-ramstead/https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwell-ramstead-43a1991b7/https://twitter.com/mjdramstead VERSES AI: https://www.verses.ai/ Intro: Tim Scarfe (Ph.D) Interviewer: Keith Duggar (Ph.D MIT) TOC: 0:00:00 - Tim Intro 0:08:10 - Intro and philosophy 0:14:26 - Intro to Maxwell 0:18:00 - FEP 0:29:08 - Markov Blankets 0:51:15 - Verses AI / Applications of FEP 1:05:55 - Potential issues with deploying FEP 1:10:50 - Shared knowledge graphs 1:14:29 - XRisk / Ethics 1:24:57 - Strength of Verses 1:28:30 - Misconceptions about FEP, Physics vs philosophy/criticism 1:44:41 - Emergence / consciousness References: Principia Mathematica https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30567249049 Andy Clark's paper "Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2013) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23663408/ "Math Does Not Represent" by Erik Curiel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA_T20HAzyY A free energy principle for generic quantum systems (Chris Fields et al) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.15242.pdf Designing explainable artificial intelligence with active inference https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.04025 Am I Self-Conscious? (Friston) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00579/full The Meta-Problem of Consciousness https://philarchive.org/archive/CHATMO-32v1 The Map-Territory Fallacy Fallacy https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.06924 A Technical Critique of Some Parts of the Free Energy Principle - Martin Biehl et al https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.06408 WEAK MARKOV BLANKETS IN HIGH-DIMENSIONAL, SPARSELY-COUPLED RANDOM DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS - DALTON A R SAKTHIVADIVEL https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.07620.pdf

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.