Karl Friston: Life, Consciousness, and the Meta-Hard Problem

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Previously titled “Karl Friston on What Is Life, Consciousness, the meta-Hard Problem, and the Free Energy Principle” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026

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Recorded26 Apr 2021

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YouTube link: https://youtu.be/2v7LBABwZKA Karl Friston is a British neuroscientist at University College London and an authority on the free energy principle and predictive coding theory. Patreon for conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, and God: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Help support conversations like this via PayPal: https://bit.ly/2EOR0M4 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Google Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Id3k7k7mfzahfx2fjqmw3vufb44 Discord Invite Code (as of Mar 04 2021): dmGgQ2dRzS Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything LINKS MENTIONED: Iain McGilchrist's interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-SgOwc6Pe4 Donald Hoffman's interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmieNQH7Q4w Anil Seth's interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hUEqXhDbVs Stuart Hameroff's interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLo0Zwe579g Machine Learning Street Talk's interview with Karl Friston (not mentioned but an informative watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkR24ieh5Ow TIMESTAMPS 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:45 Balancing work and life with an h-index of 200+ 00:04:33 Daily routine 00:05:55 How to choose which problems to work on? 00:10:13 Defining "deflationary" and "self-evidencing" 00:14:33 Equilibrium vs non-equilibrium steady state 00:20:52 Why is it called the Free Energy Principle? 00:27:20 What is the Free Energy Principle? (two answers) 00:41:15 Is causation and time required for the FEP? 00:46:03 FEP incomplete because it doesn't incorporate relativity? 00:57:21 Schrödinger, entropy, gradient flow, and life 00:59:01 Why is the Free Energy Principle infamous for being esoteric? 01:01:00 Is FEP a TOE? A theory of everything? 01:03:20 Do atoms have "beliefs" in a Bayesian sense? 01:04:54 List of different fields FEP has implications for (physics, biology, AI, etc.) 01:17:47 On Occam's Razor and Artificial Intelligence 01:25:38 Newcomb's paradox 01:29:05 FEP - a Law of Nature or a different way of compressing? 01:36:50 Jordan Peterson's "order and chaos" and the FEP 01:50:51 Using brain structure to infer about the world 02:07:12 On hierarchies and modelling different "things" (tools don't behave like apples) 02:13:59 The importance of "shared narratives" 02:18:37 Religion as aiding "shared narratives" 02:22:43 Politics needs 50 / 50 splits on issues 02:25:53 The existence of free will and definition of it 02:28:43 Self fulfilling prophecies 02:31:37 Schizophrenia, Curt, and Karl 02:45:48 "You are your own existence proof." 02:48:03 Can you think yourself into non-existence? 02:51:33 Definition of generative model 02:54:06 Donald Hoffman's consciousness model 02:54:34 Quantum consciousness and Penrose's Orchestrated OR 02:59:41 What does FEP say about consciousness? 03:09:48 The meta-Hard Problem of Consciousness 03:15:22 Anna Lukomsky: Idealism vs Physicalism 03:28:13 Joanne Dong: Explain the meaning of life via the FEP 03:34:23 Monotheism vs Polytheism in terms of FEP and psychology 03:38:50 Faraz Honarvar: Do our actions matter to the world? 03:47:20 Final words on Schizophrenia and existential anxiety from studying different metaphysics * * * Subscribe if you want more conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, God, and the mathematics / physics of each. * * * I just finished (April 2021) a documentary called Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of "when does the left go too far?" Visit that site if you'd like to watch it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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