arxivcs.LGq-bio.NC2026-07-12
Constructed Reality, Contested Priors: Decoupling and the Architecture of Cognitive Relapse Under the Free Energy Principle
Under the free energy principle, a predictive system does not observe reality directly; it maintains a generative model of the world and experiences that model's best current hypothesis. Can a synthetic environment be made consistent enough that a predictive system's own inferenc…