ton2lavega

No, the distinction between democracy and republic was well established before Madison. It appears in James Harrington's works. It also appears in works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and even Aristotle. I could find the precise quotes of their works to support my point, but I'm not at home. If you're into this kind of stuff, I recommend Bernard Manin's The Principles of Representative Government. Sounds boring but it's actually a great book.

Depends. First, a biological network is not just connections of neurons, it's weighted connections of neurons. And even saying that is a huge approximation.

It's not just about mapping the topology of the brain, just having a neural network of 1e10 vertices and 1e12 links will not give you an artificial intelligence. It's just not that simple. The connectome paradigm is not sufficient. It is hip because of computer scientists using artificial neuron networks to achieve awesome stuff. But that doesn't mean that the complexity of the human brain only resides in the number of neurons and interactions. It's not guaranteed that we are getting closer of the goal just by adding billions of neurons and connections.

I find this wannabe holistic approach a bit confusing as it is horizontal whereas I am convinced that what we need is a vertical approach : up from graph topology down to an accurate biophysical understanding of synapses and information transmission, all across multiple scales, from the angström up to microns.

That's the key : multiscale modeling, not single-huge-scale modeling.