Sorry, I’ll rephrase. I expect you to agree with the following; do you?
“If you have an actual mechanical thermostat connected to an actual heater, and that’s literally the whole system, then this particular system is a feedback control system. And the most useful way to model it and to think about it is as a feedback control system. It would be unhelpful (or maybe downright incorrect?) to call this particular system an Active Inference system, and to say that it’s ‘predicting’ that the room temperature will stay constant.”
“Downright incorrect”—no, because Active Inference model would be simply a mathematical generalisation of (simple) feedback control model in a thermostat. The implication “thermostat is a feedback control system” → “thermostat is an Active Inference agent” has the same “truth property” (sorry, I don’t know the correct term for this in logic) as the implication “A is a group” → “A is a semigroup”. Just a strict mathematical model generalisation.
“and to say that it’s ‘predicting’ that the room temperature will stay constant.”—no, it doesn’t predict predict specifically that “temperature will stay constant”. It predicts (or, “has preference for”) a distribution of temperature states of the room. And tries to act so as the actual distribution of these room temperatures matches this predicted distribution.
Sorry, I’ll rephrase. I expect you to agree with the following; do you?
“If you have an actual mechanical thermostat connected to an actual heater, and that’s literally the whole system, then this particular system is a feedback control system. And the most useful way to model it and to think about it is as a feedback control system. It would be unhelpful (or maybe downright incorrect?) to call this particular system an Active Inference system, and to say that it’s ‘predicting’ that the room temperature will stay constant.”
Unhelpful—yes.
“Downright incorrect”—no, because Active Inference model would be simply a mathematical generalisation of (simple) feedback control model in a thermostat. The implication “thermostat is a feedback control system” → “thermostat is an Active Inference agent” has the same “truth property” (sorry, I don’t know the correct term for this in logic) as the implication “A is a group” → “A is a semigroup”. Just a strict mathematical model generalisation.
“and to say that it’s ‘predicting’ that the room temperature will stay constant.”—no, it doesn’t predict predict specifically that “temperature will stay constant”. It predicts (or, “has preference for”) a distribution of temperature states of the room. And tries to act so as the actual distribution of these room temperatures matches this predicted distribution.