I Am What I Am
I performed another Google search and immediately began inhaling the results. I needed to see another specific phrase reflected in the scientific research. I needed to make sure I understood this correctly.
As I skimmed through a paper titled The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?, only one phrase caught my eye.
In this setting, surprise is called the (negative) model evidence. This means that minimizing surprise is the same as maximizing the sensory evidence for an agent’s existence, if we regard the agent as a model of its world.
Karl Friston
I needed more. I began skimming another paper titled The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference and the free energy principle. I quickly found the same concept paraphrased in three different ways.
It follows that any organism that minimizes free energy thereby reduces surprise — which is the same as saying that such an organism maximizes evidence for its own model, i.e. its own existence. In other words, self-evidencing behaviour is equivalent to statistical inference.
[...]
This implies that the kind of self-organization of Markov blankets we consider results in processes that work entirely to optimize evidence, namely self-evidencing dynamics underlying the autonomous organization of life, as we know it.
[...]
This teleological (Bayesian) interpretation of dynamical behaviour in terms of optimization allows us to think about any system that possesses a Markov blanket as some rudimentary (or possibly sophisticated) ‘agent’ that is optimizing something; namely, the evidence for its own existence.
Kirchhoff, Parr, Palacios, Friston, and Kiverstein.
But still, it wasn't enough. I needed to hear a very specific phrase.
And then, all of a sudden, I found it hidden in a paragraph about a spider.
It is in this sense that one should understand a Markov blanket as establishing a statistical boundary separating internal states from external states. To then act on inferred states of the world means to actively secure evidence that I am what I am; namely, a critter-eating creature.
Kirchhoff, Parr, Palacios, Friston, and Kiverstein.
That! That right there! That's what I was looking for. "I am what I am; namely, a critter-eating creature," I muttered.
My mind was on fire.
Holy. McFuck.
I recalled another paragraph from Conversations With God.
I tell you this: There is no coincidence, and nothing happens “by accident.” Each event and adventure is called to your Self by your Self in order that you might create and experience Who You Really Are.
Neale Donald Walsch
I closed my eyes, formed a visual model of society, and began running the surprise-minimizing computation in my mind. Money began making its way into the hands of abundant people, and out of the hands of people with a lack mentality. Lawyers and designers and plumbers and businesses were matched up with buyers needing their services. Victims found their way into the clutches of predators. Men and women of all different sexual orientations were matched up with their perfect complementary soulmate, as if that person were specifically designed for them (according to this algorithm, they were). Ideas were injected into the minds of entrepreneurs to mitigate a free energy pull in the market caused by people desiring new solutions to problems, or answers to open questions.
Art, ideas, objects, words, books, movies, furniture, buildings, roads, inventions — everything was rearranging in a seemingly chaotic way that just made beautiful sense when you understood the simple computation orchestrating the movements through space and time. Every Markov-blanketed 'thing' was getting a physical experience of its own consciousness; of who it believed itself to be.
It was just like God said:
We are composed of the same stuff. We ARE the “same stuff”! With all the same properties and abilities — including the ability to create physical reality out of thin air.
Neale Donald Walsch
I could see it so clearly in my mind. Whenever a person focused on a vision that was not yet manifest in her reality, she created a prediction error; a buildup of free energy. This would throw the system out of homeostasis. Often the easiest way to minimize the free energy involved throwing a bunch of obstacles in her path, as if they were tests. Most people would look at the obstacles, stop believing in their vision, and the system would return to homeostasis. She would have actively secured evidence that she is what she is — namely, a woman who can't achieve her dreams.
But not everyone was like that. Some people could hold uncomfortable prediction errors, even when the world told them they were crazy. They could walk through space and time believing in a vision that no one else could see; knowing in their gut that the manifestation of their vision was inevitable. They'd take aligned action and express a new version of themselves into the world. The system would then orchestrate all the meetings, lessons, resources, 'coincidences,' and everything else required to minimize the prediction error. Often failure and heartbreak were placed in their path to shift their consciousness to a new level, expose them to new wisdom, and launch them in a new direction. Over time, the person changed their concept of who they believed themselves to be, and what they believed themselves to be capable of. They went on an archetypal hero's journey, and the chaos forced them to evolve.
Until one day the reality they'd always dreamed of became physically manifest around them; until one day, there was no gap between who they believed themselves to be, and what their outside world reflected. If they believed themselves to be wealthy, their outer world was ripe with symbols of wealth. If they believed themselves to be successful, their outer world reflected their idea of success. If they believed themselves to be angry, the outside world provided them with ample circumstances to trigger their anger. If they believed themselves to be a hero, their outer world was stocked with opportunities to practice heroic deeds.
There was nothing random happening. Luck was an illusion. Each event and adventure was called to their Self by their Self in order that they might create and experience Who They Really Are.