Freud\u2019s version of free energy (he used the same term) was similar to his notion of excitation: an uncomfortably stimulating psychic energy, which the nervous system sought to discharge. \u201cAccumulation of excitement,\u201d he wrote in \u201cThe Interpretation of Dreams,\u201d \u201cis perceived as pain and . . . the diminution of the excitement is perceived as pleasure.\u201d The urge to discharge the free energy was what drove a person to act\u2014to move around, to seek sex, to work. Friston\u2019s version of free energy\u2014prediction error\u2014could sound at first as if it were all about cognition, just as Freud\u2019s version could sound at first as if it were all about sex, but at root they were both about survival. Minimizing prediction error, in other words, was much bigger than it sounded. When the brain strove to minimize prediction error, it was not just trying to reduce its uncertainty about what was going on in the world; it was struggling to resolve the contradictions between fantasy and reality\u2014ideally by making reality more like fantasy. The brain had to do two things in order to survive: it had to impel its body to get what it needed, and it had to form an understanding of the world that was realistic enough to guide it in doing so. Free energy was the force that drove both. \u2013 The mind expanding ideas of Andy Clark, Larissa MacFarquhar (The New Yorker, 2018)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freud\u2019s version of free energy (he used the same term) was similar to his notion of excitation: an uncomfortably stimulating psychic energy, which the nervous system sought to discharge. \u201cAccumulation of excitement,\u201d he wrote in \u201cThe Interpretation of Dreams,\u201d \u201cis perceived as pain and . . . the diminution of the excitement is perceived as pleasure.\u201d The urgeRead more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1122,1771],"tags":[3801,4493,4492,4494,2805],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67170,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67169\/revisions\/67170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}