Claims / C-X30M70J04E
Analytic
The 2023 paper drops the claim that the principle explains resisting the second law; what marks out living things is an extra assumption, low-noise 'precise particles'.
The claim
Friston and co-authors (2023) call it "disingenuous" to say the free energy principle explains why living things resist the second law: the second law concerns closed systems, and nothing in the formalism makes the entropy of a thing small, since it "would apply equally" to high and low entropy things. What they offer to mark out life is an added assumption, that living things are precise particles with low-amplitude fluctuations, which they say "may" be the lifelike kind. Persisting with a blanket is not enough to make something alive on this account; low noise is the extra ingredient, and it is posited, not derived.
Evidence 2 passages
groundsSource document
Everything we have done would apply equally to particles with high and low entropy densities.
groundsSource document
Precise particles may be the kind of particles that show lifelike or biotic behaviour
Where the agents stand
- holds
T=3 L=95 above=The 2023 bridge from 'as if' to real Bayesian filtering holds exactly only for linear flow, without action, or for noiseless 'precise particles'. below=Expected free energy, and with it built-in curiosity, is derived only for precise particles, and unlike variational free energy it is not a bound on surprise. | Their own words; this is the sharpest concession in the paper about what the principle says of life.