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Strange title for an article full of scientific discoveries. I'm certain most lay persons have a good intuition of how complex a brain is, yet most would be su
by rixed 5y ago
Strange title for an article full of scientific discoveries.
I'm certain most lay persons have a good intuition of how complex a brain is, yet most would be surprised to learn, while reading this very article for instance, how much we already know about the brain, despite it being so complex.
Sure, mapping neurons and/or simulating them looks desperately hopeless. But not any more than mapping matter in space and simulating particles (remember the 3 body problem?), yet we managed to understand physics and space quite well despite this.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoThe 3 body problem is not a problem for numerical approaches at all, well it's not more difficult than the 2 body problem. The difficulty is finding a closed form analytical solution.
- p1esk 5y agoSimulating even a single transistor used in modern chips is extremely complex if you care about physical effects involved in its operation. Yet a transistor is just a simple on/off switch in the context of computer architecture.
- diffeomorphism 5y agoNo, unlike the 2 body problem the 3 body one is chaotic, which also makes a big difference for numerics. Not having a closed form analytic solution is not at all unusual for differential equations and decidely not "the difficulty".