
Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty - themgt
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/
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napoleoncomplex
The original title on the website does not do much to reveal the content, but
in short, the book is about a new "theory of the brain" (new as in the past 10
years), based on predictive processing.

The post itself, and the follow-up posts about predictive processing on the
above blog are probably the easiest way to get into the subject, and it's an
insanely interesting subject.

The core of the idea is written a bit into the blogpost: "The key insight: the
brain is a multi-layer prediction machine. All neural processing consists of
two streams: a bottom-up stream of sense data, and a top-down stream of
predictions. These streams interface at each level of processing, comparing
themselves to each other and adjusting themselves as necessary."

Deeper into the post, there's a breakdown of how this theory fits into various
areas of research in novel ways (autism and schizophrenia among them), and I
strongly suggest reading through at least that.

