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Discussion question for machine ethics researchers – if the free energy principle were right, would it disprove the orthogonality thesis?
No, and for two reasons.
1) The free energy principle is descriptive only, as Friston says in the Alius interview. It (apparently) makes no predictions about behaviour, much less about terminal goals.
2) It applies specifically to biological organisms. Most of Scott's sources note that this behaviour arose through natural selection, to handle certain specific types of uncertainty related to staying alive. It has no bearing whatsoever on, say, alien intelligences, much less computers, which can be programmed with any mind we can design.
This assumes that the free energy principle is true & correct, which I’m not sure that it is. Being unfalsifiable is a bad start, as is the fact that Karl Friston’s work is impenetrable. Most simplified explanations of the free energy principle are either equally impenetrable or seem somehow confused (this one is difficult to quantify, but reading this hasn’t really given me any insight into behaviour; if this is actually revolutionary, there should be some combination of words that makes the true meaning shine through like the sun on a cloudless day) and as far as I know, nobody has used free energy or its related concepts to achieve anything remarkable. Strong evidence that this is probably pointless.