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Right, I was just bringing that up as an example of simulating without understanding. The paper is talking about taking another approach. Whether it will work
by staticassertion 5y ago
Right, I was just bringing that up as an example of simulating without understanding.
The paper is talking about taking another approach. Whether it will work or not is not something I could comment on.
Another example is how we have a very imperfect model for the universe, and yet we use our models to make strikingly accurate predictions. Huge gaps in our knowledge exist, but that doesn't stop us from using approximations to do interesting things.
- tsimionescu 5y ago> Right, I was just bringing that up as an example of simulating without understanding. But that's just it - first they spent some time understanding how the system works,painstakingly mapping out each connection, the role of each individual cell (literally), they studied the chemistry inside each neural cell etc. The simulation effort started after all of this was done. If anything, I would say OpenWorm is a counter-example to the idea that you can simulate such a system without understanding it. Similarly, with our model of the universe, while gaps exist, the extent of those gaps and approximations is mostly known, and the areas affected by those gaps are exactly where we can't make predictions (e.g. the internal structure of a black hole). Not to mention, we had a massive piece of good luck there: it turns out that particles are described by linear equations, which have extremely nice properties for approximations. Already with GR we are in much worse territory with it's nonlinear equations, but at least we understand these well enough to create some linear approximations - or so we think.