[R] Are neurons the wrong primitive for modeling decision systems?

A recent ICLR paper proposes Behavior Learning — replacing neural layers with learnable constrained optimization blocks. It models it as:

“utility + constraints → optimal decision”

https://openreview.net/forum?id=bbAN9PPcI1

If many real-world systems are optimization-driven, should “optimization modules” replace neurons as the basic building block of ML?
Or is this just structured inductive bias rebranded as a new paradigm?