Comment by AntonS on Launching Lightspeed Grants (Apply by July 6th) · 2023-07-06T18:49:40.062Z · LW · GW

Thanks a lot! Now I have access, and  I've just updated my application. I haven't found a "save" button or anything like that, but I assume it works without it (when I reopen my application in Airtable, it shows the updated version of the application).

Comment by AntonS on Launching Lightspeed Grants (Apply by July 6th) · 2023-07-06T17:15:03.225Z · LW · GW

Thanks a lot for organizing this!! This is a really great thing.

I submitted my application, and now I'm trying to make some last-minute edits. I clicked on the "this link" link in the application conformation email, successfully created an Airtable account, clicked on "this link" again, requested "access to interface", and now I'm waiting for an approval to get access and edit my application. Is this how it's supposed to work? Or is this a bug to be fixed before applicants can update their applications? Thanks again!

Comment by AntonS on Why I’m not into the Free Energy Principle · 2023-07-05T03:30:48.303Z · LW · GW

Thanks, very interesting discussion! Let me add some additional concerns pertaining to FEP theory:

• Markov blankets, to the best of my knowledge, have never been derived, either precisely or approximately, for physical systems. Meanwhile, they play the key role in all subsequent derivations in FEP. Markov blankets don't seem to me as fundamental as entropy, free energy, etc., to be just postulated. Or, if they are introduced as an assumption, it would be worthwhile to affirm that this assumption is feasible for the real-world systems, justifying their key role in the theory.
• The Helmholtz-Ao decomposition refers to the leading term in the series expansion in terms of $\sigma$ (or the effective noise temperature $T$) as a small parameter. Consequently, subsequent equations in FEP are exact only at the potential function's global minimum. In other words, we can't make any exact conclusions about the states of the brain or the environment, except for the only state with the highest probability density at steady state. Perhaps adding higher-order terms (in $\sigma$ or $T$) to the Helmholtz-Ao decomposition could fix this, but I’ve never seen such attempts in FEP papers.

Also, a nice review by Millidge, Seth, Buckley (2021) lists several dozens of assumptions required for FEP. The assumption I find most problematic is that the environment is presumed to be at steady state. This appears intuitively at odds with the biological scenarios of the emergence of the nervous system and the human brain.