Romain Brette

Commercial publishers poison academia. They must be banned.

The Brain, In Theory Why engineering and computational analogies are poorly suited to the study of biological cognition

My book "The Brain, in Theory" on the publisher's website (out in April 2026):
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

The Brain, In Theory Why engineering and computational analogies are poorly suited to the study of biological cognition

On the publisher's website:
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Wow I had no idea this existed. Bacteria that build centimeter-scale electrical wires to breathe.

I'm actually into protozoa, even better!

This kind of frustration is why I turned to more accessible organisms and became part-time experimentalist, to quickly try theoretical ideas. It's amazing how far off from your original idea you can land after a number of cycles of theorizing-experimenting.

In this case, the prize can even be given to an economist who inspired a policy that led to the worse budgetary crisis in decades (or ever?), if that economist is respected by a sufficiently large fraction of the field. It says as much about the field than about the person.
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In a polarized field like economics, you can then have economists with entirely opposite views, say Aghion and Stiglitz, honored by the prize. Contradictory views cannot be all correct.
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The Nobel prize in economics. The fact that it's not a "true" Nobel is anecdotical. What matters is that a prize (Nobel or other) is given by people, and not by an omniscient God of Science. So it's a social recognition within an academic field, not a badge of Truth.
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Paul is impressive. These are tough subjects and every time he can lead an hour of conversation with insightful questions.

That's a pretty a bad argument. Introducing an (alleged) solution to a problem shouldn't create a whole set of new problems, especially worse ones.

The idea of science as mainly hypothesis testing is an old philosophical conception that has been thoroughly debunked by at least 80 years of philosophy of science.

OMG no. Not all scientific research takes the form of testing a hypothesis. That would be a terrible move.

Certainly is if everyone endorses it without question.

And that's good?

I think the issue that many people see here is that it is also an official endorsement. It tells journalists that it's ok to use an LLM to assess whether a paper is correct. It encourages editors to screen submissions with it.

On this subject, Blumberg's "Basic instinct" is amazing: www.amazon.fr/Basic-Instin...

L'ERC est très hypocrite sur ce point: "significant publications in major international peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journals". Le facteur d'impact c'est mal, par contre il faut quand même publier dans Nature pour être "excellent".

Slide with title 'Details vs realism' showing a picture of a wooden model airplane on left and a paper airplane on right.

gave a short lecture this morning on principles of computational modelling, always try to stress the point made by @romainbrette.bsky.social that adding details to a model does not automatically make it more realistic.

The wooden airplane model has more 'details' but only the paper model can fly

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge This week I was looking for info on what cognitive scientists mean when they speak of ‘domain-general’ cognition. I was curious, because the nuances are relevant for something I am researching at t…

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

Notes on consciousness. (XI) Why large language models are not conscious The current discussions about AI are plagued with anthropomorphism. Of course, the name “artificial intelligence” has probably something to do with the matter. A conscious artificial intelligence m…

Why large language models are not conscious.
romainbrette.fr/notes-on-con...

A general biological phenomenon, like Aplysia for learning.

Two b, or not two b, that is the question.

I guess a PhD is all about questioning what everyone takes for granted.

At this point, I wonder why one would want to justify their neuro research by the hope of making a breakthrough in AI. Like, that would be a good thing?

so true

Banning for-profit journals won't solve everything, but it's a necessary first step. One thing in particular that publisher money is consistently used for is lobbying against the general interest, and this is one of the greatest obstacles to political change.

Ok you lost me now. I have no idea what you are talking about!

It's getting very confusing. What do you actually want to do?

You want to automate the enforcement of "rules of good science" and gave p<.05 as an example. Did I misunderstand?