Maybe the small, fast, predictive processes "vote"?

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

Research:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

On Tue, Jul 7, 2026, 8:35 AM glen <[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
>
> 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]>> 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>
> >
> >     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>
> >
> >     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>
> >
> >     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.
> >
> >     --
> >     8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
> >     ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους,
> ἵνα σώσω.
>
>
> --
> 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
> ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα
> σώσω.
>
>
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