Living vs nonliving

Recently, I have answered (to myself) another old question. How a living differs from a nonliving? Here is the answer that was good enough for me: The living can create a mental model of the world, plan, predict, act based on the prediction, and correct the model based on the result of the action or based just on the observations. In the primordial soup, some chemical structures managed (accidentally) to predict and remember (evolutionally, from generation to generation) whatever helps to survival. That was how life started. 

The development and progress of living organisms towards acquiring consciousness continued as an individual started to remember and repeat the successful predictions, then pass this ability to the next generation.

To my delight, after I have searched the web, I have found the confirmation to this idea. It turned out a well-known and respected neuroscientist Karl Friston came up with a free energy principle that states that biological systems try to minimize the difference between their model of the world and their sense and associated perception.

This difference can be described as “surprise” and can be minimized by two methods:

1) by changing the model, so it matches the senses and perception;

2) by changing the world to match the model.

Friston also believes that his principle can help to understand the nature of mental disorders as well as to build artificial intelligence. The inference engine proved to have advantages over other methods of building artificial intelligence. 

By the way, please, note that a self-confident person acts more often and decisively than a person not sure in his opinion and prone rather change his understanding than the world around him. Naturally, this human quality had a better chance to survive evolutionarily. That’s why, I think, we prefer to change the world than ourselves.

So, the living differs from nonliving in the ability to predict and correct its world model, while a human (with developed consciousness) prefers to change the world. Can this be the root cause of many modern problems? Especially so, if we take into account that cooperation with others is not as necessary for surviving today as it used to be.

That is why the superiority of the living over nonliving maybe not a long-term. At some point in the future, everything may return back to the basics – the primordial soup in a paddle surrounded by the rocks.

My only hope resides with the human ability to adapt. We did it before.