Will reverse engineering of the human brain really work?

   Edward Teller once said, "The main secret of the atomic bomb was that it could be done at all." What is the main secret of reverse engineering of the human brain into computer hardware and software? Is the secret the fact that it can be done?

   People think intuitively in a linear manner. - Ray Kurzweil, 2007, Singularity Summit at Stanford

    The human capacity for self-deception is very nearly infinite. - Francis Crick

     Is Ray Kurzweil's optimism about the future more justified than Bill Joy's pessimism? How accurate is Kurzweil's 2005 book "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology"? Are Crick's ideas essential for researchers who want to effectively simulate the workings of the human brain?

    Is Wolfram's book "A New Kind of Science" relevant to the reverse engineering of the human brain? Is it very strange to think of the mind of Leonardo da Vinci as a Turing machine?

   We are symbols, and inhabit symbols. - Emerson

    The paradigm shift rate is doubling every decade. - Ray Kurzweil

    Is a straightforward approach to the reverse engineering of the brain likely to be a miserable failure? There are at least eight levels of complexity in a mammal: ions in water with hydrogen bonds; proteins and other molecules floating and interacting; DNA mechanisms, organelles, and cellular membranes; entire cells; networks of cells; organs; individual behaviors; social interactions among mammals. The complexity of the wetware might defeat any precise simulation by hardware. There are problems of representational complexity, empirical inaccessibility, and computational intractability.

    You have to apply the abstractions at the right level. - Ray Kurzweil

   According to Wolfram, there are surprisingly simple computational models that scientists do not even suspect the existence of. Imagine impressive computer simulations of the insight, intuition, and creativity of inventors like Wozniak, Edison, and Leonardo da Vinci. Such simulations, if they exist, might prove that Wolfram is correct.

   The reverse engineering of the brain might follow a foundation of molecular neuroscience as envisioned by Crick, a method of simulation created by genius-level inventors, and a philosophy of Socrates, Dale Carnegie, and Murphy's law. The foundation might be 20% of the effort, with the method 75% and the philosophy 5%. In other words, molecular neuroscience would be the foundation, but most of the effort would the genius of inventors who use inspiration instead of straightforward imitation.