Keith Duggar: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, so we were just thinking about this. We've done these interviews. The Free Energy Principle originated around about 2005, right? And I just kind of wanted to get a bit of a retrospective from you on, let's say, what have been the successes so far, the free energy principle? How's it been going? What what could have gone better over the last, you know, 20 odd years? You know, really just what's your what's your take on the progress, I guess, with the free energy principle? It's a difficult question to answer in the sense that if you asked me if I'd made a meal, and you've asked me, How's that meal going? And did you really enjoy it? When you're doing it, you're sort of in the middle of it and it's very difficult to assess. So it's been a journey. I do catch myself from time to time thinking this is the right way to think about things. Whenever you come across a phenomenon or a problem or an application that seems to just slip in quite neatly to the overall theoretical framework, Every time that happens I get a little buzz of dopamine that consolidates and comes, Yeah, I'm on the right track. I haven't wasted so much time. There have been times in my life when I realized I'm on the wrong track, so I'm used to that. But for the particular application of the free energy principle, I have yet to have that, oh, well, that doesn't work then. Think about it. You know, do do do something else. What could have gone better? I'm not I'm ambivalent about this, but I am sometimes well, I am ambivalent when I read the free energy principle is notoriously difficult to understand. Now half of me thinks, good, because it's always important to have a slight degree of magic and mysticism to engage people. If people don't think there's a challenge, that they have accomplished something by understanding it, then they're not going to be motivated to inquire and to think about it, or indeed debate it. On the other hand, the free energy principle is not meant to be complicated or difficult to understand. It's actually almost tautologically simple. Being able to communicate the free energy principle in a way that people find a useful and obvious sort of tool or method to apply could have, I think, gone better. And that may be because I'm not very good at keeping things simple or intuitive. We can attest to that.…

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