The objective is to simulate the real-time activities of the brain, not the evolutionary-time activities that were and are acting on the brain. Continuing from

The objective is to simulate the real-time activities of the brain, not the evolutionary-time activities that were and are acting on the brain. Continuing from your extension of the fractal analogy, the former is more like an "iteration of the Mandelbrot" while the latter is "how to generate the next frame". We do not need to know how our human-precursor brains worked, nor do we need to know what our human-successor brains will be like to successfully simulate current-human-brain intelligence. It seems plausible to me that we will be able to understand how to simulate the functions of the brain without necessarily simulating the physical universe and its remarkable evolutionary unfolding--which seems to be the ultimate level of complexity and one that I agree is far beyond us.