alt Hacker NewsPLEASE just stop complaining about "moving the goalposts" when the issue is your own lack of clarity of both expression and reasoning. WHAT is the distinction between "simulate" and "predict"? You said neither by the way, you said "evaluate".
> ANY physical system can be evaluated to ANY DEGREE of accuracy by a computer
It's completely SENSELESS to claim that they are distinct, because in order to EVALUATE or SIMULATE the physical system you will need a FUNCTION which COMPUTES the STATE of the system at a given point in time. The only POSSIBLE distinction between SIMULATING and PREDICTING would be the time taken for the computation, but that is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT as long as it is finite.
Again, your own source says:
> We CERTAINLY don’t have ANYTHING CLOSE to a complete UNDERSTANDING of how the basic laws actually play out in the real world
How does that square with your claim above?
> You said neither by the way, you said "evaluate".
You are entirely correct. I was sloppy in my first comment. I should have said simulate. My sincere apologies if that's been the crux of our dispute.
> The only POSSIBLE distinction between SIMULATING and PREDICTING would be the time taken for the computation
No. The distinction is in determining which "you" is you. When simulating the wavefunction, every you is simulated.
> We CERTAINLY don’t have ANYTHING CLOSE to a complete UNDERSTANDING of how the basic laws actually play out in the real world
It's very understandable if you include his following sentence:
> But these are manifestations of the underlying laws, not signs that our understanding of the laws are incomplete
He's saying we don't understand emergent behavior produced by the laws - not that the laws themselves are incomplete. E.g. we don't know how/why a bag of neurons turns into a person.