I try to understand both the complex biology and first principles. This may be true for everyone in the forum.
My spatial navigation network is a first principles model. It came from clues I found in “Dynamic Grouping of Hippocampal Neural Activity During Cognitive Control of Two Spatial Frames”. I use the model as a basis for understanding how a biological brain might similarly use traveling waves to navigate.
What I most need are both. I want to perform tests that include such things as the formation of religious beliefs that make no sense at all. For example in a modeled society I could teach one that I am the creator of the universe and they are my chosen disciple to teach the holy word written by their omnipotent god himself, their lord Gary Gaulin. An emotionally biased biological brain is expected to be prone to blindly believe everything that this disciple says, because it feels good to do so, while others should demand evidence before accepting such a thing is true. From this it is also possible to understand the neurological basis of religious psychosis and other conditions that have through history helped keep our world at war. With enough time it’s expected that religions of many kinds should all by themselves emerge.
A model based on first principles may or may not have the same problems. In that case the best outcome is (after reading everything found in Google Scholar) to logically answer “big questions” that were once thought to be impossible to test.
I would very much welcome the model you are proposing. The problem though is that the first principles are mostly unknown. So I’m again forced to first try making sense of grid cell modules and other biological systems. It seems that you are very knowledgeable in that area. Your insights can be of great value to myself and others.