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question:why-should-the-potential-energy-be-minimized-what-is-it-about-nature-that-makes-it-act-to-minimize-the-rate-of-heat-production

Why should the potential energy be minimized? What is it about nature that makes it act to minimize the rate of heat production?

Alexander's challenge to the foundational intelligibility of minimum-energy principles, motivating a deeper explanation

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The principle of unfolding wholeness is purely geometrical in character, not arithmetical and not energy-based, distinguishing it fundamentally from least action.
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Alexander's characterization of what makes his principle novel relative to least-action formulations

Related by similarity (8)

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Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

"A system can minimize free-energy by changing its configuration to change the way it samples the environment, or to change its expectations. These changes correspond to action and perception respectively."concept0.769
Load-bearing definition of how action and perception implement free energy minimization.
acting to optimize value and perception are two aspects of exactly the same principle; namely the minimisation of a quantity [free energy] that bounds the probability of sensory input, given a particular agent or phenotype.quote0.748
Concise statement of the free-energy principle's unification of action and perception.
Acting to optimize value and perception are two aspects of exactly the same principle: minimization of free energy.claim0.746
Foundational claim unifying action and perception within single optimization framework.
Free energy minimisation is asymptotically equivalent to the Principle of Unitarity, driving agent and environment toward dissolution of separabilityclaim0.746
Remarkable convergence result showing optimal modelling erodes the distinction the modeller imposed
If the minimization of free energy is just a corollary of descent onto a global random attractor, does this mean that adaptation and evolution are just ways of describing the same thing?question0.740
Question about the relationship between adaptation, evolution, and free energy minimization.
Agents perceive by minimizing variational free energy to ensure model consistency with past observations and act by minimizing expected free energy to make future sensations consistent with preferences.claim0.736
Formalization of perception-action cycle integrating inference and decision-making.
Curiosity, insight, decision-making, and diverse phenomena can all be accommodated by a single imperative: minimization of expected free energy (resolution of uncertainty).claim0.733
Central thesis of the paper unifying cognitive phenomena under one objective function
The most likely (i.e., best) policies minimise expected free energy.claim0.732
Decision-making rule in active inference.