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The Brain in the Dark: A Conversation with Professor Karl Friston on Perception, Free Will and Whether Machines Can Be Conscious

In this interview, I spoke to Professor Karl Friston, the neuroscientist behind the free energy principle, about why the brain perceives from the inside out, where free will fits into a predictive mind, what separates us…

Dr. Vikas Shah 27 min read

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Three thousand moments. Three picked at random.

“Only 8.5% of projects meet or exceed their time and budget expectations. This means that a staggering 91.5% fail to stay within budget or meet deadlines. However, the situation becomes even more pronounced when we consider the primary goal of these projects: delivering promised benefits. Shockingly, a mere 0.5% achieve this goal within the allocated budget and timeframe.”
— Bent Flyvbjerg Leading researcher on megaprojects, planning, and governance expert
“Optimism is the expectation of good things to happen. Resilient optimism is optimism that is built on a set of behaviours and stays strong when it's tested.”
— Michelle Gielan
“Disorders of consciousness, and psychopathology generally, can now be viewed through the lens of false inference.”
— Karl Friston

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  1. 01 Business & Economics The End of Hand-Written Code: A Conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) on AI, Omarchy and the Future of Programming 365 interviews
  2. 02 Culture, Society, Sports & Arts The Brain in the Dark: A Conversation with Professor Karl Friston on Perception, Free Will and Whether Machines Can Be Conscious 239 interviews
  3. 03 Politics & Policy Who Decides What a Country Is? Michael and Liam Bates on Sealand, Sovereignty and Belonging 172 interviews
  4. 04 Science & Technology The Brain in the Dark: A Conversation with Professor Karl Friston on Perception, Free Will and Whether Machines Can Be Conscious 141 interviews
  5. 05 Health & Medicine Different, Not Wrong: A Conversation with Dave Plummer on Autism, Task Manager and Coding with AI 75 interviews
  6. 06 Nobel Laureates Markets, Morals and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Professor Alvin Roth 21 interviews

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