Anyone who has been actively recruiting STEM graduates over the last decade feels this plot in their bones.

You don't need to squint. You can zoom in on PDFs, e.g. Hopfield 1982:

I think the answer to that question might be the answer to the first question...

🤣 on that topic it's about as explanatory as any model gets

i'm not even joking... a minor modification gets us the canonical model of decision making under uncertainty:
psycnet.apa.org/buy/2006-126...

This often piques their interest:

"Ahh, you didn't show the input" is a common response.

I tell them there is no input. Again, quizzical faces. Something must be wrong. Who is this guy, anyway?....

Apropos of never ending discussions about whether ANNs are "good" models of the nervous system, here is a slide I present to masters students showing a network that is found in motor control circuits *across phyla* (that's pretty ubiquitous!) I ask them to guess what it does...