We can’t accurately simulate the physical behavior even of pure water. (Yet; and from other reading about this I’ve done recently, it’s a long way off.) Therefore: Fantasies about simulating brains are fantastical.https://twitter.com/ashleythesmart/status/1032294373382340608 …
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Water is a knock-down argument against reductionism as a theory of how rationality works. It’s astonishing what we DON’T know about water. We can’t even simulate individual isolated water molecules accurately. http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_molecule.html …pic.twitter.com/TXhrCsw5HP
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Replying to @Meaningness
I know this is rhetorical, but still, you cannot use "accurately" as an absolute. We *can and do* simulate water molecules to *some degree* of accuracy & precision ± error. What level of accuracy are you suggesting vitiates reductionism? Or do you mean precision?
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Replying to @Jayarava
In this case, “accurately enough to qualitatively predict simple intermolecular processes,” eg
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Replying to @Meaningness
In all my years of doing chemistry, I never had much trouble knowing what atoms or molecules would do or the kinds of processes that they would undergo.
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Replying to @Jayarava
Well, I don’t know if you followed the links, but both are to discussions of pretty basic things about water that are not understood. Apparently there are many such. A lot of this has to do with its transient hydrogen-bonded multimers: http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_hydrogen_bonding.html …
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The behavior of the multimers is apparently critical to predicting gross bulk phenomena like supercooling phase transitions (the subject of the first article in this thread).
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