A Gentle Introduction to the Free Energy Principle

What does it mean to be alive? The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Free Energy Principle</a> (FEP) is one of the more elegant theories to attempt an answer to this question. Developed by Karl Friston and others from the mid-2000s onward, the FEP builds on and integrates a number of key ideas from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">cybernetics</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">predictive coding</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">bayesian inference</a> into a single unified theory. At a basic level, FEP is a theory about what enables living organisms to stay alive. It is simple enough to account for single-celled bacteria and powerful enough to account for humans in all our complexity. In this article, I provide an overview of the theory (and its extension as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle#Active_inference" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Active Inference</a>) from a completely non-technical perspective. If you are interested in a more mathematically rigorous treatment of the FEP, here are <a href="https://a.co/d/3aQV1Do" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="https://www.uab.edu/medicine/cinl/images/KFriston_FreeEnergy_BrainTheory.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">useful</a> <a href="https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/16683/1/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">resources</a> (if you want a critique of the theory, there are <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/3/293" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">those</a> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/emperors-new-markov-blankets/715C589A73DDF861DCF8997271DE0B8C" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">too</a>). <a href="https://awjuliani.medium.com/a-gentle-introduction-to-the-free-energy-principle-03f219853177">Click Here</a>