ArticleEntropy (Basel, Switzerland)2024
The Universal Optimism of the Self-Evidencing Mind.
Article in Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Five Fristonian Formulae.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A task-invariant prior explains trial-by-trial active avoidance behaviour across gain and loss tasks.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- An Active Inference Model of the Optimism Bias.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Karl Friston's free-energy principle casts agents as self-evidencing through active inference. This implies that decision-making, planning and information-seeking are, in a generic sense, 'wishful'. We take an interdisciplinary perspective on this perplexing aspect of the free-energy principle and unpack the epistemological implications of wishful thinking under the free-energy principle. We use this epistemic framing to discuss the emergence of biases for self-evidencing agents. In particular, we argue that this elucidates an optimism bias as a foundational tenet of self-evidencing. We allude to a historical precursor to some of these themes, interestingly found in Machiavelli's oeuvre, to contextualise the universal optimism of the free-energy principle.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.