The Predictive Machine - How Minds and Robots Build Reality from Within

The brain is a control system operating as a multi-layered predictive engine that constructs a future-oriented world model by minimizing qualia potential—a latent dynamical quantity analogous to the gunas of Sāṅkhya philosophy. Within this parallel predictive architecture, top-down priors are continuously calibrated against bottom-up sensory signals through a delayed error-integration loop. Consciousness is modeled as an emergent process observing the world model, experiences variations in qualia potential, and can identify with a self-model embedded within it, offering a formal account of subjective phenomena emphasized in Eastern philosophy.