Information in circulation is self-organised critical. Small changes in environment can make large, discontinuous changes in the information space.
Related but distinct: Information cascades Information transmission is analogous to infectious disease transmission: information that sustains R0>1 spreads "virally" to significant fractions of the world; information with R0<1 has limited spread. Any information that remains in circulation stays at R0=1[1], analogous to an endemic infectious disease[2]. This is an example...
Dec 12, 20258
Slightly different frame: predictive coding / perceptual control, instead of active inference. I think it plausibly explains why "believing in" and beliefs-as-predictions are very near in human conceptspace, to the extent that many languages don't distinguish them?
"Believing in" → beliefs-as-predictions: If you want a project to yield good future outcomes, you would "believe in" the project, and the target-setting of your brain would predict good project outcomes (hold a target set-point of "the project has yielded good outcomes"), and the perceptual control part of your brain steers your actions towards making the project go well.
Beliefs-as-predictions → "believing in": If you believe that a prediction market contract is underpriced and buy YES shares, you would then be incentivised to act to help the YES outcome actually happen. You've come to "believe in" the YES outcome.