We are now in a position to connect these ideas about regulation to what we know about predictive perception. System B works by inferring the ambient temperature from sensor readings, just as our brain makes best guesses about the causes of its sensory signals in order to infer states of the world (and body) and how they change over time. But the goal for System B is not to figure out ‘what’s there’ – in this case the ambient temperature. The goal is to regulate this inferred hidden cause, to take action so as to keep the temperature within a comfortable range, and ideally at a single fixed
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