I had an interesting argument with a friend Friday at the pub. He speculated that there is a (much) larger diversity of audio sensors/processors across biology than of light/vision sensors/processors. It wasn't a very concrete speculation because we went 'round a few times about vision versus light and *use* of audio versus *use* of light, etc. It even descended into a conversation about the jargonality of "radial" versus "bilateral" animals. I normally look this stuff up a bit before posting about it. But I haven't yet and I likely won't get the chance until my next episode of insomnia.
But my *doubt* was expressed from the perspective of serial versus parallel processing. I tried to counter-speculate that vision (either in animals with multiple eyes or a small number of eyes, but multiple sensors like rods/cones laid out in a plane) seems to often be parallel. And that audio seems (mostly?) sequential. Granted, *fusion* takes place with both (hence the discussion of bilateral animals). But not only do animals have binocular (or more) vision, but we also have parallel sensors like retinae. This led to my raising the degrees of freedom from scaffolding question: When iterating off a scaffold, have the degrees of freedom increased or decreased from the state before/without the scaffold? If one argues the DoF are fewer atop the scaffold, then it might make sense that vision apparatuses exhibit less diversity. Of course, our stack of nonsense had piled very high at this point. So we moved on to arguing about the uses of fernet in various cocktails ... On 7/24/26 8:04 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
"Anyway, my point is that if we thought of these subnetworks/circuits as separate ganglia that could have been located closer to the sensorimotor manifold they manage, then interoception kindasorta reduces away." Humans have fairly simple retinas. Roughly 3 layers. Built backwards. 3 types of color detectors, if you are lucky. The three-layers-built-backwards part is conserved across pretty much all vertebrates, but in terms of vertebrate mammal retinal complexity is mid. Birds and reptiles have much more "processing" complexity in the eyes, as well as more types of color receptors. Some birds have 10 times the number of retinal neurons we have in the equivalent space. In addition to lots of critters having 4 or 5 types of cones, some amphibians even get an extra type of rod. And then if you get into invertebrates there is a ton more that can happen at the back of the eye, and many more types of receptors (Mantis Shrimp have the currently known record, with 12 types of color receptors). You also can get eyes that are not built backwards, i.e., where the light receptors are actually in the front. I suspect, historically (i.e., across evolutionary time), we lost a lot of that retinal complexity when we were small, nocturnal animals with very little reliance on color vision. When we went back to day-time living, and ripe-fruit targeting, the complexity ended up in the back of the brain rather than re-evolving into the retina. Hard to say why, but it seems to have worked out well for us. How this relates to interoception I'm unsure. Best, Eric On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 11:55 AM glen <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Yes, the way the active inference people (in particular - much less so than the predictive processing people) write/talk is either simply very dense *or* laden with bias. But re: your cross-trophy (?) comment - I can't help but think we're a lot more like octupusses than we want to admit. Each anatomical region of the brain might be thought of as a semi-independent ganglion. And maybe it just so happens our ganglia are clustered in our head/CNS for convenience or some sort of energy minimization ... or maybe risk minimization (which is why the meningeal lymphatic architecture paper was included in my list). Sure, *some* newer regions may only be 'efficient' because our ganglia are co-located. But we might also be able to smear those out, distribute them through (an artificial) organism with other pathways. Anyway, my point is that if we thought of these subnetworks/circuits as separate ganglia that could have been located closer to the sensorimotor manifold they manage, then interoception kindasorta reduces away. On 7/11/26 3:33 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > I skimmed the predictive processing chapter. My main thought was wondering if it still seemed interesting if translated into less jargon-ey English. > > My second thought was: Doesn't Gibson help with this? Isn't the "loop" problem a "problem" at least in part because you are trying to find the loops inside the organism instead of in the larger organism-environment system? > > /If/ there is specification in the ambient energy, /then /the loop can extend outside the organism, and exist at whatever scale the relevant patterns exist at. Yes, you need sufficient neuronal support for the organism to do their part of the loop... at least with us very-neuronal organisms... but that type of "complexity" is different than the complexity one might imagine if they thought _all_ the work had to happen inside the head. For example, recognizing that one is accelerating towards the ground --- because the rate of optic expansion is accelerating --- could be much easier than trying to "predict" whether one is accelerating towards the ground by comparing a series of snapshot images and trying to neuronally create an internal model of everything happening around you. You can offload most of that by not trying to "model" things that are directly perceivable. And that can extend as far as we can extend "perceivable." > > Re the first thought.... Here is a quote: > > The second type of predictive circuitmight support the sequencing and arbitration of behaviors. Simple solutions to these problemsmight appeal to generative models for sequential dynamics (Parr et al., 2023). For example, locomotion behavior in C. elegans might be supported by sequential generativemodels that encode expected transitions among locomotion behaviors(e.g., forward and backward movements, left and right turns), with decision points corresponding to bifurcations in the dynamical sequences (Kato et al., 2015). In turn, the transitions prioritized at bifurcation points might depend partially on external sensation and partially on internal (e.g., interoceptive) sensations reporting impending drives and needs, which leads us to the next point. > > > So far as I can tell, that means something like: > > A second thing well-developed neuron clumps do is ensure movements happen in order, so as to form coherent "behaviors." We can understand how this happens in several ways, some of which Ph.D.-level scientists call "simple." Roundworms, for example, swim in predictable ways, sometimes changing direction. Those turns sometimes depend on external factors, at least in part. > > > Seriously... this might be my weird form of getting old and yelling at kids to get off my lawn... but... Ugh... A lot of that might as well be pretentious continental philosophers stringing jargon together. "The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of mediation and as a fall into the exteriority of meaning. To this epoch belongs the difference between signified and signifier, or at least the strange separation of their 'parallelism,' and the exteriority, however extenuated, of the one to the other." Orwell could take at least half the sentences as examples of bad writing, and not be wrong. Even in my attempt at a translation, the word "ensure" is highly suspect. > > Best, > Eric > > <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > > > On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 10:35 AM glen <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote: > > Of course. You have a knack for pushing my buttons. 8^D > > What irritates me about all this active inference and predictive processing advocacy [⛧] is well-represented in the title of that chapter "From Sensorimotor Skills to Higher Cognition". [grrrr] The reason I took the time to download it and start skimming it was my hope for a thorough *composition* from the very small-fast feedback loops to the large-slow ones. There are a lot of citations. So maybe the clues are in there. But I'm lazy. > > What I *want* ... what I really really want is evidence of predictive processing in a minimal model organism like C. Elegans or Drosophilia. Such exist [1-5]! But now we need something like connectome (or simpler?) circuits in more complex organisms that show how small-fast predictive processing composes into large-slow predictive processing. Does the model work at *all* scales? Only some scales? Is it like a percolating stew of predictions, some of which are suppressed by the larger circuits? > > Speaking of which, I discovered this book just last night: > > https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952 <https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952> <https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952 <https://bookshop.org/p/books/from-human-reasoning-to-belief-an-empirical-account-joshua-mugg/de6c8394b4e24d99?ean=9781032736952>> > > But as always, it's silly to keep buying books I'll never read. I post it here in the hopes that you readers out there might read it and tell me what it says ... or maybe I'll buy the epub and feed it to Claude ... or maybe it's read it already? I haven't checked. You'll remember we've had such arguments before, when you claimed I *must* believe in the floor in order to get out of bed in the morning. And my counter was that it is my *doubt* about the existence of the floor that allows me to get out of bed. IDK if Mugg's "DJ mixing board" model fits one of our stances better. But I do like it better than the overly simplistic fast vs slow thinking model. > > > [1] Dimakou A, Pezzulo G, Zangrossi A, Corbetta M. The predictive nature of spontaneous brain activity across scales and species. Neuron. Published online March 1, 2025. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2025.02.009 > [2] Kaplan H, Nichols A, Zimmer M. Sensorimotor integration in Caenorhabditis elegans: a reappraisal towards dynamic and distributed computations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2018;373. doi:10.1098/rstb.2017.0371 > [3] Kim A, Fitzgerald J, Maimon G. Cellular evidence for efference copy in Drosophila visuomotor processing. Nature neuroscience. 2015;18:1247-1255. doi:10.1038/nn.4083 > [4] Lin A, Witvliet D, Hernandez-Nunez L, Linderman S, Samuel A, Venkatachalam V. Imaging whole-brain activity to understand behavior. Nature reviews Physics. 2022;4:292-305. doi:10.1038/s42254-022-00430-w > [5] Wang S, Segev I, Borst A, Palmer S. Maximally efficient prediction in the early fly visual system may support evasive flight maneuvers. PLoS Computational Biology. 2019;17. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008965 > > > [⛧] It seems to me that most of the peri-Friston work borders on advocacy of the model(s) as opposed to challenging them. But I'm not a scholar. So my scope is very small. > > On 7/6/26 8:15 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > > Hi, Glen, > > > > I liked the predictive processing thing. It coheres with an idea I have been kicking around of late. People tend to think of cognitive processes as putting us in touch with the world as it is. Then we look at that represented world and make decisions about the future. Wouldn't it make more sense for cognitive processes to put us in touch with the world as it is going to be? To translate that back into monist talk, we live in a world of successive anticipations. As I get more frail, I become aware of all the hard work my cerebellum must be doing to anticipate the consequences of any action I might take that changes my center of gravity. A delayed prediction can lead to my taking actions that compound a balance prediction and send me to the floor. it's like I am doing judo to myself. > > > > Is that annoying enough to feed the beast? > > > > Nick > > > > On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 6:31 PM glen <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>>> wrote: > > > > It's so dead, here, I figure it can't hurt to post arbitrary nonsense I've run across lately: > > > > Meningeal lymphatic architecture and drainage dynamics surrounding the human middle meningeal artery > > https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693> <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693>> <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693> <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113693>>> > > > > Constructing a lower-bound estimate of the global number of insect species on a hyperdiverse empirical foundation > > https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123> <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123>> <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123> <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123 <https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524283123>>> > > > > Predictive Processing: From Sensorimotor Skills to Higher Cognition > > https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011> <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011>> <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011> <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/15999.003.0011>>> > > > > As always, I'm reading them in fitful bursts, interleaved across each other and all the other open tabs and crap strewn about my desk. So .... grain of salt and all. > >
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