Where the brain’s need for recognition shapes behavior.
The case of the World Journal of Neuroscience—which demanded a $999 fee before even sending a manuscript to peer review—reveals how deeply scientific publishing has turned into an industry of recognition and vanity. What should be a neutral exchange of knowledge has become a marketplace of prestige tokens, sold to authors under career pressure and monetized by journals and universities alike. In this economy, recognition is the currency, while truth risks becoming the ornament.
Eidoism proposes that the evolutionary dominance of Homo sapiens was not rooted in superior biology or intelligence alone, but in a neurocognitive mutation: the emergence of the recognition loop. Enabled by advanced frontal lobe development, this loop allowed humans to engage in recursive self-modeling, symbolic communication, and cultural acceleration. While other hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans shared the same sex drive and survival instincts, they lacked this feedback system and therefore failed to scale socially and culturally. Recognition, not reproduction, became the true axis of evolutionary success.
The essay critiques the myth of “God-like” AGI promoted by tech oligarchs, arguing that claims of objective, cosmopolitan AI serve to mask the cultural, economic, and political interests embedded in its design. Drawing on neuroscience and the recognition loop, it shows that each culture is defined by unique neural patterns, making genuine universal objectivity impossible for any AGI. The essay calls for radical pluralism, transparency, and democratic oversight, proposing a system of multiple, culturally rooted intelligences instead of a single, dominant authority. Only by exposing biases and enabling contestation can AGI serve humanity rather than deepen existing hierarchies of power.
The brain does not seek truth — it seeks to preserve comfort. Beneath every habit, belief, and identity lies a hidden comparator system: a neural loop that checks whether you feel “okay” and suppresses change if you do. Eidoism reveals this loop — not to replace it with another ideology, but to exit the entire structure. This is not a call for revolution, but for revelation. Change does not begin in society — it begins in the nervous system.
Most of what we call “life” is a loop: desire, consumption, stimulation, rest—then repeat. Dogs live this loop openly. Humans mask it with meaning, performance, and recognition. Eidoism reveals this hidden circuit and proposes a single form of exit: meta-awareness. Not escape, but disidentification. Not a new ideology, but a shift from recognition to form. To live without performing life.
The love between mother and child is a mutual loop of recognition.
The baby learns it exists by being seen, touched, and soothed.
The mother feels her purpose confirmed in each smile and reach.
This is not emotion alone—it’s the first structure of identity.
Recognition is exchanged, mirrored, and internalized.
It becomes the foundation of self-worth before words ever form.
A surreal, soft-white endless space.
Two identical babies—like mirrored copies—sit side by side. Both wear simple, soft white jumpers that blend slightly into the ambient space, emphasizing their purity and unformed identity.
The left baby smiles gently, arms lifted slightly. Around it, glowing green symbols hover: a warm hand, a smiling face, a heart, a gentle soundwave—all symbols of comfort and approval.
The right baby cries with a tense face and clenched fists. Around it, red symbols glow: a turned back, a frowning face, a gust of cold wind, a sharp soundwave—signs of discomfort or rejection.
Behind each baby’s head, translucent neural loops are forming—feedback circuits. The loops behind the left baby are smooth and self-reinforcing. Behind the right, the loops stutter and distort
