[ewjordan]

You're absolutely right - looking at that quote (and looking through the original one that Myers responded to), he's overstated what we can conclude based on DNA length by a good amount (though Myers argument doesn't disprove the upper bound, by any means; it merely points out that Kurzweil's "proof" doesn't hold). The problematic phrase, which makes this argument pretty ambiguous, is "simulate the brain" - neither party has really pinned down what they mean by that, so it's hard to know what would qualify. In retrospect, I think I cut Kurzweil a little too much slack when deciding what he meant, esp. in light of his other writings on the topic...

It's a shame, because his argument is fully defensible if it's stated correctly and applied to the general problem of AI instead of to Kurzweil's pet theory that full brain simulation is the One True Way.