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I\u2019ve been trying to delve deeper into\xa0predictive processing theories of the brain, and I keep coming across Karl Friston\u2019s work on \u201cfree energy\u201d.

At first I felt bad for not understanding this. Then I realized I wasn\u2019t alone. There\u2019s an entire not-understanding-Karl-Friston internet fandom, complete with its own\xa0parody Twitter account\xa0and Markov blanket memes.

From the journal\xa0Neuropsychoanalysis\xa0(which based on its name I predict is a center of expertise in not understanding things):

At Columbia\u2019s psychiatry department, I recently led a journal club for 15 PET and fMRI researhers, PhDs and MDs all, with well over $10 million in NIH grants between us, and we tried to understand Friston\u2019s 2010 Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper \u2013 for an hour and a half. There was a lot of mathematical knowledge in the room: three statisticians, two physicists, a physical chemist, a nuclear physicist, and a large group of neuroimagers \u2013 but apparently we didn\u2019t have what it took. I met with a Princeton physicist, a Stanford neurophysiologist, a Cold Springs Harbor neurobiologist to discuss the paper. Again blanks, one and all.