I simply can't understand why people feel the need to proclaim that something plausible will never ever happen some time in the (possibly very distant) future.

I simply can't understand why people feel the need to proclaim that something plausible will never ever happen some time in the (possibly very distant) future. It's both stupid, unproductive and often embarrassing (when they are proven wrong). >"But Nicolelis is in a camp that thinks that human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply can’t be replicated in silicon. I'm guessing/hoping that the silicon reference was made by the author of the article and not Miguel Nicolelis, considering that silicon is extremely likely to be replaced by graphite or something else in the next decade or two, at least with almost full certainty by the next century. If it actually was Nicolelis who spoke about silicon, it automatically discredits him from having anything to say about the distant future of computing. >That’s because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, non-linear interactions amongst billions of cells, Nicolelis says." Even if that was true, which I doubt, so what? There has to be some kind of a system behind those "unpredictable, non-linear interactions" in order for the brain to have any functionality at all, and every system can be figured out and simulated. It might be incredibly complex and take centuries for us to gain the required knowledge and processing power, but even that doesn't make it impossible.