[0239kffkk]

I had a similar reaction, working in an adjunct field but as someone who often works with neuroscientists.

My impression is that there's a lot of very oversimplified assumptions being made all the time in these fields that get glossed over in very arrogant (or naive?) ways. It's really astonishing to me, not just because of how oversimplified the assumptions are but because researchers are then surprised things don't work out.

To be fair, this is true of other fields as well. I'm more familiar with molecular genetics and genomics, and the same things happen there. There seems to be a certain hubris that goes unquestioned, and it always amazes me, the sci-fi fantasy narrative being accepted as fact.

Just to take one thing for example: there's huge anatomical differences between people's brains even at the macroscopic level, that just get glossed over in discussion. Those fMRI images you see? They're often done by aligning different images to a common map, just assuming individuals' brains are carbon copies of one another. Now you're going to try to delineate a connectome at the neural level, as if there is one connectome at that level?

When will everyone learn? Where's the public skepticism?