{
  "abstract": "Friston's free energy principle holds that a system separated from its environment by a Markov blanket (a boundary whose states statistically screen its interior from its exterior) can be treated as performing approximate Bayesian inference, and that such blankets arise wherever coupling is short-range. We test this blanket condition in a concrete nonlinear pattern-forming system: self-replicating spots in a reaction-diffusion model that persist, compete, reproduce, and die. Directed boundary exchange and timescale separation hold up reasonably well. A flux-defined blanket does not screen interior from exterior. Flux removes only part of the linear dependence, and a nonlinear test shows that conditioning on flux increases the dependence. We argue that this is because flux is a statistical collider. Conditioning on the boundary's own concentration state screens about a fifth of the nonlinear dependence. The dependence is concentrated within about one organism radius of the boundary. A band of the surrounding field of that thickness does screen the interior from the exterior beyond it, as any short-range field would; this is not evidence of inference.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.27235",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "John E Pearson"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f4yny0bqfbwpt.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.27235",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "f4yny0bqfbwpt",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27235",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "nlin.AO"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "nlin.CD"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "nlin.PS"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "q-bio.NC"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Embodied and Extended Cognition"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223135879",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.27235",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-24",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f4yny0bqfbwpt.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:35:35Z",
      "native_id": "2610.27235",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27235"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "arxiv:q-bio.NC",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:nlin.AO",
      "subfield": "statistical-nonlinear"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Does a Flux-Defined Markov Blanket Screen Self-Replicating Gray--Scott Spots? A Computational Test of a Blanket Condition from the Free Energy Principle",
  "title_text": "Does a Flux-Defined Markov Blanket Screen Self-Replicating Gray--Scott Spots? A Computational Test of a Blanket Condition from the Free Energy Principle",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:35:44Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f4yny0bqfbwpt",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}