I agree somewhat. I would not be willing to say impossible, but I am also not convinced it's possible. I would like to see people try. But it could be impossibl

I agree somewhat. I would not be willing to say impossible, but I am also not convinced it's possible. I would like to see people try. But it could be impossible for a discrete classical digital computer. It's a distinct possibility, and without "magic." I think what I was getting at was this: I'd take the Kurzweil crowd more seriously if I saw them really engaging seriously with the depth and breadth of biology... if I saw them talking about the sorts of things I was talking about seriously instead of hand-waving them away. I get the impression (I'm knowledgeable in biology BTW, and a programmer) that they are making the frequent programmer mistake of failing to have respect for the problem domain they are entering. A similar error often occurs in creative product development. In this case you have a software effort to subsume/encapsulate an informal industrial process that is approximately five billion years old. There are lots of things going on that we don't understand yet, and that will not yield to a cavalier, dismissive approach.