[echoangle]

I would say the issue with predicting weather by simulating flows isn’t mainly that we can’t simulate single atoms, it’s that we just don’t have enough input data. If I would magically give meteorologists a method to instantly simulate every atom of the atmosphere, they still couldn’t exactly tell me what the weather would be like in a week. It’s too dependent on small input changes for that.

> A rocketry analogy would be Archimedes dreaming about people traveling to the stars.

What’s wrong with that? The claim was „some day“, not in 5 years. It could take a few centuries or longer.

[nipah]

It could also be impossible, which for some reason people hardly consider.

[echoangle]

It might be. But is there any hint that there are things we can absolutely not simulate?

I think there’s a good chance we won’t be able to simulate a exact propagation of a brain into the future due to quantum effects and unknowable starting states, but I don’t see how simulating one possible future could be impossible.

[nipah]

We have some hints to be skeptical on the prospect, I would say.

Like the fact we can't even explain an everyday phenomena all humans experience like consciousness. If you don't understand a common phenomena that (supposedly) occurs in the brain, you have a fundamental lack of knowledge on how the brain itself works, and thus simulating it would not be a thing possible to do.

Another hint is the fact that we can't currently even simulate a single cell because of how much complex they are, and the most advanced neuron models (like hodgkin-huxley) are still gross simplifications of how we think a real neuron works. We don't have any proof that this is a possible thing, it is something people believe it is the case, but pretty much could be a dead-end.

Other is that we don't have a way to reliably know the state of the alive brains without modifying them, so reproducing one with fidelity appears to be very hard or maybe even impossible.

And so on.