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Edwin Thompson Jaynes
Portrait: Tomixdf at English Wikipedia, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
1922–1998

Edwin Thompson Jaynes

Later authors use these to describe how agents choose, how internal states track external ones, and how microbes adapt. They also use his work in debates over what Bayesian inference covers.1234

Born
5 July 1922
Died
30 April 1998
Country
United States
Field
physicist, statistician, mathematician
In the library
1 work, named in 5 passages elsewhere
Facts from
Wikidata · Wikipedia · Open Library
18501875190019251950197520002025Friston K, Schwartenbeck P, Fitzgerald…, 20131Palacios ER, Razi A, Parr T, Kirchhoff…, 20202Katz Y, Springer M, 20163Campbell JO, 20164Campbell JO, 20165
01

Maximum entropy in active inference

Friston and colleagues tie Jaynes's maximum entropy principle to exploration. When an agent holds flat prior beliefs that all final states are equally valuable, it keeps its options open and maximizes entropy over those states. They say this fits expected utility theory.1 Palacios and colleagues apply the same principle to Markov blankets.

02

Inference applied to organisms

Katz and Springer cite Jaynes's 2003 book when they propose that adaptation to changing environments can be framed as inference under uncertainty. They build this into a strategy for microbial growth, illustrated with glucose and galactose in yeast.3 Campbell lists the same book among works that use equivalent mathematical forms for evolutionary change, here under culture, alongside biology and neuroscience.5

SourcesEach quotation was checked word for word against the passage it opens.
  1. in other words, it will explore according to the maximum entropy principle (Jaynes, 1957).Friston K, Schwartenbeck P, Fitzgerald T, Moutoussis M…, 2013 · The anatomy of choice: active inference and agency · open at passage 34
  2. internal states will reduce free energy by parameterising a variational density over external states with maximum entropy; in accordance with Jaynes’ principle of maximum entropy (MacKay, 2003).Palacios ER, Razi A, Parr T, Kirchhoff M, Friston K, 2020 · On Markov blankets and hierarchical self-organisation · open at passage 33
  3. We propose that adaptation to changing environments can be framed as inference under uncertainty (Jaynes, 2003).Katz Y, Springer M, 2016 · Probabilistic adaptation in changing microbial environments · open at passage 12
  4. The consensus Bayesian position is that probability theory only describes inferences made by humans. As Jaynes put it (Jaynes, 1988):Campbell JO, 2016 · Universal Darwinism As a Process of Bayesian Inference · open at passage 43
  5. evolutionary change in biology (Gardner, 2008; Frank, 2012b), neuroscience (Friston, 2010; Fernando et al., 2012) and culture (Hull, 1988; Jaynes, 2003; Mesoudi et al., 2006; Gintis, 2007).Campbell JO, 2016 · Universal Darwinism As a Process of Bayesian Inference · open at passage 57
In the library1 work
Probability theory: the logic of scienceJaynes
2003
Probability theory: the logic of science
Jaynes
2003 · described