Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the free energy principle in biology

[Laughter] hello everyone welcome to the active inference lab this is active inference live stream number 31.0 it's october 14 2021. welcome to the act imp lab we are a participatory online lab that is communicating learning and practicing applied active inference you can find us at the links here on this slide this is recorded in an archived live stream so please provide us with feedback so that we can improve on our work all backgrounds and perspectives are welcome here and we'll be following good video etiquette for live streams at this short link you can see some of the past present and future streams that we'll be doing in the lab as part of the dot com's organizational unit and the first tab has the regular tuesday discussions that are group discussions dot one and dot two right now we're in a dot zero kind of an ad hoc scheduled contextualizing live stream and then the other tabs have other kinds of live streams that can be scheduled at different times different topics so just let us know if you want to get involved or co-organize an event with us today in active stream number 31.0 the goal is to learn and discuss this paper non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the free energy principle in biology by patricia palacios and matteo colombo like all the dot zeros you'll get the disclaimer that this is just an introduction to some of the ideas of the paper and the context it's not a review or a judgment or a final word in 31.0 we're going to start by looking over some of the key aims and claims and the abstract and the roadmap of the paper to get the big picture then talk about some of the keywords maybe you're really familiar with some of the keywords maybe it's the first time you've thought about some of these topics and then we'll walk through some of the figures and formalisms and just get set up in the coming weeks to be discussing this paper so we'll start with just some introductions and warm-ups we'll say hello and then maybe just mention something that we're excited to talk about or learn about or something that we noticed while reading the paper so i'm daniel i'm a researcher in california and this is just an exciting paper and topic because it's at the intersection of chemistry and physics and thermodynamics but also active inference and it's a nice starting point for a conversation about what are the precursors and the tenants and the principles of free energy principle and active inference and then what are the consequences and what does that mean for the big picture blue i'm blue knight i'm an independent research consultant in new mexico uh and i really was excited to see this paper bring up some of the points that i've brought up as i've been reading more about active inference specifically with uh respect to ergodicity and what that means the potential implications for that and also just other minor topics but things i've mentioned in the past it's cool sometimes to see how the threads of our previous discussions and things that a participant might have brought up like hey this isn't making sense and it's like don't worry it's not just you these are open research questions and so we're seeing that and we'll be enacting it in the coming weeks some of the big questions in the paper kind of framed in non-technical or in not the author's words it's really asking what fundamental ideas from physics are utilized in the free energy principle and how are they utilized why are they utilized and then what are some implications or trade-offs associated with the use of these ideas either the ways that they have been used what are the pros and cons or what are the implications and what about the ways that they could be used so in the spirit of positive contributions to the literature how are we taking ideas from physics and other fields bringing it together in free energy principle and then what are the fundamental or just spuriously contemporary tradeoffs let's first go to the aims and claims of the authors so all read…