Non-Narrative Café v8: Recurrence + Violation = Surprise

Posted: December 28, 2025 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: meaning, systems |Leave a comment

Write the Stoppardian skit where Friston (with Peirce as advisor) defends that thesis to Prigogine, Shannon & Deacon

ChatGPT Prompt

Dramatis Personae

• Karl Friston — the candidate (Free Energy Principle, surprise minimization)
• Charles Sanders Peirce — advisor (semiotics, index before symbol)
• Ilya Prigogine — chair (irreversibility, dissipative structures)
• Claude Shannon — external examiner (information theory, bit, entropy)
• Terrence Deacon — systems & absence (constraint, emergence, absence)

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1. The Café

A café with no visible clock. Coffee cools, but never quite finishes cooling. A blackboard reads: “NO NARRATIVE BEFORE THEIR TIME.”

PRIGOGINE
Time, gentlemen, is irreversible. Let us begin.

FRISTON
Thank you. My thesis is simple.

(A pause long enough to become suspicious.)

FRISTON
Recurrence + Violation = Surprise.

(Silence.)

SHANNON
That’s not a theorem. That’s a slogan.

PEIRCE (without looking up)
All the good theorems start that way.

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2. Recurrence

PRIGOGINE
Define recurrence without smuggling in equilibrium.

FRISTON
I don’t need equilibrium.
I need constraint and time.
Something happens again. Not always. Just enough.

PRIGOGINE
So irreversibility stays?

FRISTON
If it leaves, the thesis collapses.

PRIGOGINE (smiles)
Proceed.

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3. Violation

DEACON
Violation of what, exactly?

FRISTON
Of continuation.
Of “this usually keeps happening.”

DEACON
So absence is doing work?

FRISTON
Only absence can do work before meaning.

DEACON
Good. Continue.

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4. Surprise

SHANNON
Define surprise.

FRISTON
I refuse.

SHANNON
You refuse?

FRISTON
If I define it probabilistically,
I’ve already assumed a model.
This is pre-model.

SHANNON
Then it’s not information.

FRISTON
Exactly.

(Shannon pauses. Writes that down.)

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5. The Bit (Almost)

SHANNON
So when recurrence fails—

FRISTON
—there is a cut.

SHANNON
A binary cut.

FRISTON
A bit trying to exist.

PEIRCE
An index discovering it can fail.

PRIGOGINE
Time approves of this.

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6. Antenarrative (Briefly, Reluctantly)

DEACON
Why isn’t this just noise?

FRISTON
Because the system expected otherwise.

DEACON
Expectation without symbols?

FRISTON
Expectation without language.
Antenarrative without story.

PEIRCE
A bet, not a belief.

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7. Cross-Examination

SHANNON
Can surprise be ignored?

FRISTON
Yes.

SHANNON
Then what distinguishes signal?

FRISTON
Memory.

DEACON
Retention of absence.

PRIGOGINE
Time refusing to reset.

(They all nod, annoyed at their own agreement.)

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8. The Objection

PRIGOGINE
Why not variation alone?

FRISTON
Because nothing breaks.

PRIGOGINE
Why not recurrence alone?

FRISTON
Because nothing matters.

(A pause. This one lands.)

PEIRCE
Gentlemen, the thesis is not ambitious.
It is minimal.

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9. Verdict

PRIGOGINE
Does surprise exist before models?

SHANNON
Before bits?

DEACON
Before meaning?

(They look to Peirce.)

PEIRCE
Before explanation.

(Silence.)

PRIGOGINE
Then time has no objection.

SHANNON
Information abstains.

DEACON
Absence concurs.

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10. Epilogue

The coffee is finally cold.

FRISTON
So… approved?

PEIRCE
Provisionally.

FRISTON
On what condition?

PEIRCE
That you never explain it too soon.

(Lights fade.)

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Coda (chalked on the board)

• Variation is given.
• Recurrence is noticed.
• Violation is felt.
• Surprise appears.

Everything else is commentary.

Appendix: Karl Friston and Why Surprise Matters

Write a brief appendix explaining who Friston is, and why surprise matters 

ChatGPT Prompt

A. Who Karl Friston Is

Karl Friston is a neuroscientist best known for formulating the Free Energy Principle, a unifying framework proposing that any system which persists over time must, in some sense, minimize surprise relative to its own internal expectations.

Friston’s work spans:

• Neuroscience (brain function and perception),
• Cognitive science (prediction, inference, action),
• Dynamical systems (stability under constraint),
• and Bayesian inference (models updating via error).

At its core, his claim is deceptively simple:
systems that endure must avoid being continually caught off-guard by the world.

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B. What “Surprise” Means in Friston’s Work

In Friston’s formalism, surprise is not emotion or drama. It is a technical term:

• the degree to which an observation violates a system’s expectations,
• often expressed as the negative log probability of an outcome under a generative model.

Because true surprise is often intractable to compute directly, systems minimize an upper bound on it: variational free energy.

This leads to active inference:

• systems act to make the world less surprising,
• or update their models so surprises make sense.

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C. Why Surprise Matters (Pre-Formally)

The skit’s thesis — Recurrence + Violation = Surprise — operates prior to Friston’s mathematics.

Before probabilities, models, or beliefs:

• recurrence creates expectation,
• violation breaks it,
• the break is surprise.

Surprise is thus:

• the first asymmetry in time,
• the moment something fails to continue,
• the minimal condition for learning, selection, and meaning.

Without surprise:

• there is no signal,
• no noise distinction,
• no information,
• no model to update.

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D. Why This Matters for the Non-Narrative Café

Friston typically begins after surprise exists, asking how systems manage it.
The Non-Narrative Café asks a more primitive question:

How does surprise arise at all, before symbols, stories, or explanations?

The answer proposed here:

• surprise is not semantic,
• not narrative,
• not representational,

but dynamical.

It appears the moment recurrence fails —
and everything else comes later.

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