Counterpoint, this looks like a fly with a HUGE prefrontal cortex!

brilliant!

I often add some papers from ecology showing complex swarm behaviour from simple mechanisms on the individual animal level, where it seems like the swarm has a mind of its own.

I always talk about this book in my lectures on cognitive modelling. It is a great way to get the students to question cognitive models for humans and animals as well!

Would be interesting to know how much such formats impact what research gets funded. Does everyone just find a way to write these things or does this distort the research that is pursued in favour of research that fits those boxes neatly? And as a followup, what is "boxable" research?

Perceptual decision making/dot direction has told us a lot about how evidence can be accumulated in neural circuits but if the field only goes bottom up looking for these kind of circuits for all types of dm we'd miss unique aspects, which can be prevented by a combo of bottom up and higher level.

The question is, can you simply add up all the elements or whether you are missing something in the process. I would argue that if you only do dot direction=dm, you will ignore important problems that only emerge with different kind of choices, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting!

I suspect part of answer is that emotions always had more focus on "holistic" subjective experience as simple physiological elements are often shared between emotions but they feel very different. However, there are also those that critize dot direction = dm, which is why I am commenting unsolicited

except sometimes there are also single breakthroughs like vaccines but because they are preventative we tend to forget how awesome they are!
Of course lots of research is incremental, sometimes boring and expensive, but accumulatively it saves so many lives it is hard to not see how amazing it is!

Be glad that we are not at the stage yet at which you need to watch the AI generated video interpretation of the paper instead ;)

That being said, more money for EU science is never a bad thing. I think the more important announcement was the idea to have a 3% GDP pledge for EU nations on research. That would be a big deal! the direct funds like the 500 million they announced are more symbolic than substantial in comparison

and who knows, maybe other poles will emerge, if the brain drain to the US is reduced.

I don't think it is exclusively about spending money to become a science superpower. We will likely live in a multi-polar world with each pole having distinct strengths and weaknesses. European salaries don't compete with US ones, but europe has other things going for it and same compared to China.

Being able to completely change how somebody else thinks with some "inside knowledge" for better is the most precious thing you can give young scientists and is something we should all aspire to as it means you are advancing the field (but system of competitive funding and papers work against this!)

I am equally bothered by the fact that we made science, which should be collaborative and community driven, into an extremely individualistic and competitive pursuit. I would have naively thought giving away "secrets" is the whole point of scientific exchange as long as people credit properly

proper citation practices are undervalued and journals send the wrong message by enforcing tight citation limits! Most of my papers normally hit the limit and I have to remove important citations. Massively biases citation measures to winner takes all in a system that is already biased that way!

You cannot use the phrase "you know who you are" with a bunch of paranoid academics. Everyone will feel like you are talking to them! I just checked two of my own papers for your information sampling paper citation (cited!)!