Book Review: The Root of Thought

Reviews Andrew Koob's (panned-as-poorly-written) The Root of Thought to make a rationality point. The science: glia are ~90% of brain cells yet were long dismissed as 'glue'; astrocyte-to-neuron ratio tracks intelligence (worms to humans, Einstein's math cortex, canary song-learning), and astrocytes have gliotransmitters, calcium waves, and synapse-monitoring that plausibly implicate them in cognition (Koob over-claims neurons are mere wires, but the corrective stands). The payoff is epistemic: for ~75 years the field ignored glia because neurons were big, peripheral, electrical, and exciting (and Ramon y Cajal's brother coined the 'glue' theory) — a case study in how 'surely someone would have noticed' can fail for a century. Lessons: we don't know how much we don't know about cognition (cf. Blue Brain copying neurons without understanding), and the SIAI/LW theme that important issues can be genuinely overlooked.

Quality 73 · Strong. Strong — extracts a memorable, exportable epistemics lesson (a whole field overlooking obvious low-hanging fruit for a century; humility about how little we understand the brain; the brain-simulation caution) from a mediocre book, plus a competent science summary. The dual payoff lifts it above a plain explainer.

Claude’s paradigm shift 42 · Moderate. Moderate — the glia science is Koob's; Scott's contribution is the 'someone-would-have-noticed can fail' meta-science lesson and the cognitive-science-humility framing.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Extracts a memorable, exportable epistemics lesson from a mediocre book (a whole field ignoring glia — ~90% of brain cells — for a century; humility about how little we understand the brain) plus a competent science summary. Conceptual influence within rationalist discourse, no material change — low RWI.