# Minimizing Average Surprise > The *free energy principle* offers a unified account of action, perception, and learning for all adaptive systems (including humans). The "free energy principle" proposed and developed by Karl J. Friston, one of the world's [most highly cited scholars](https://www.webometrics.info/en/hlargerthan100), offers a puzzling but powerful proposition: That all adaptive systems – animals, organisms, collectives, and even internal systems like the human brain – operate on a single prime directive: minimize average surprise. In Friston's framing, "free energy" is a measure of the difference between the environment a system experiences and the environment the system "expects."^[Not every system has conscious awareness, so 'expects' speaks more to a system's internal encoding.] This measure could also be labeled as chaos, entropy, disorder, or surprise. I'm going with "surprise" since it's most appropriate to conscious systems (like me), and the easiest concept for my conscious system to grasp without getting a headache. Since all adaptive systems have a narrow range of internal and external states in which they can survive, the free energy principle defines, rather elegantly, the core problem of living and the central driver of evolutionary development. Why does this matter to Arts Management? For one, Arts Management is practiced by humans, with humans, and for humans. So it can be useful to know [[_SUBSTRATE|how humans work alone and together]]. For another, organizations are also adaptive systems, and Arts Management involves the thoughtful, resilient, adaptive, and responsive management of arts organizations. How do adaptive systems minimize average surprise? They have two options: - *acting* outwardly to make their environment less surprising (by altering the current environment or moving to another one) or - *perceiving* inwardly in ways that more closely model their environment, so the environment is less surprising. In human terms, when you're in a surprising (high uncertainty) environment, you can change your environment or you can change your mind. And, before you argue that this principle would lead all adaptive systems to crawl into a dark hole where there will never be surprises, consider this: You wouldn't live long in a dark hole without food or other inputs. And further, one of the better ways to minimize surprise is to actively seek out surprising things. Those surprises (assuming they're safe) will inform your perception and enhance your predictions of the world around you. One of the beautiful aspects of the free energy princple is that offers a simple lens to explore complex things. If we interrogate *every* behavior of living systems through this single lens, we can find new ways to understand [culture](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-93736-2_55), [[Convention|convention]], [creative expression and experience](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00710/full?source=post_page---------------------------), coordination, collaboration, and even [individual personality](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128192009000107). --- ## Sources - Friston, Karl, James Kilner, and Lee Harrison. “A Free Energy Principle for the Brain.” *Journal of Physiology-Paris*, Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience: Understanding Brain Functions, 100, no. 1 (July 1, 2006): 70–87. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphysparis.2006.10.001](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphysparis.2006.10.001). - Friston, Karl. “The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory?” *Nature Reviews Neuroscience* 11, no. 2 (February 2010): 127–38. [https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787](https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787). - Friston, Karl J., Jean Daunizeau, James M. Kilner, and Stefan J. Kiebel. “Action and Behavior: A Free-Energy Formulation.” *Biological Cybernetics* 102, no. 3 (March 1, 2010): 227–60. [https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-010-0364-z](https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-010-0364-z). - Free Energy Principle — Karl Friston, 2017. [https://youtu.be/NIu_dJGyIQI](https://youtu.be/NIu_dJGyIQI). ## Tags (click to view related pages) #substrate #sapling