Thomas waves his hands and says "the brain is really complicated". He doesn't address how much complexity needs to be modeled, but he implies a lot of it does.

Thomas waves his hands and says "the brain is really complicated". He doesn't address how much complexity needs to be modeled, but he implies a lot of it does. Kurzweil says a "sufficiently complex" program will exhibit consciousness. So the rub is exactly what are the essential properties of the brain, and what are the accidental ones or the ones that can be implemented some other way.