  In this letter we investigate an information theoretic analogue of the
classic two masses on spring system, arising from a physical interpretation of
Friston's free energy principle in the theory of learning in a system of
agents. Using methods from classical mechanics on manifolds, we define a
kinetic energy term using the Fisher metric on distributions and a potential
energy function defined in terms of stress on the agents' beliefs. The
resulting Lagrangian (Hamiltonian) produces a variation of the classic DeGroot
dynamics. In the two agent case, the potential function is defined using the
Jeffrey's divergence and the resulting dynamics are characterized by a
non-linear spring. These dynamics produce trajectories that resemble flows on
tori but are shown numerically to produce chaos near the boundary of the space.
We then investigate persuasion as an information theoretic control problem
where analysis indicates that manipulating peer pressure with a fixed target is
a more stable approach to altering an agent's belief than providing a slowly
changing belief state that approaches the target.
