The first point I am trying to make is that Both computers and Brains are physical objects, each of them are powered by electricity and make calculations based on the flow of that electricity through their components. At a fundamental level it is impossible that a synthetic brain can not be created as their is no magical, or impossible element a brain possesses that can not be simulated.

Hey, some of us believe in magic brains.

OMG... this is still going on...

We also understand the concept of futility...

I reckon almost all of you started from a point that brings to nowhere. Do you know that Artificial Intelligence scientists, researchers, companies and universities are trying to arrive to replicate the human intelligence from decades? The fact that no one reached his goal is so simple that you could probably not imagine.

First of all, the meaning of "intelligence", the way with which we use to mean that term, is completely wrong. We use the old concept of intelligence inherited from classic philosophy, that thought intelligence was only relative to the faculty to use logic. Unfortunately (for all the people who followed this road), intelligence is something more complex than logic.

I exort you, if you really want to know how the real things are, to make some interesting reading on some of the discoveries of the modern psychology. Take a look, for example, to Antonio Damasio. He is one of the most important living scientists who have studied the behavior of the human brain. In 1995 he wrote "Descartes 'Error", with which "flips the cultural tradition that has always devalued emotions because could disrupt the serenity of reason and shown that, on the contrary, they are essential for good functioning of the mind: if a man loses emotional capacity is not able to be reasonable."

Damasio says his theories through scientific evidence. In fact, he makes reference to a patient's clinical study (patient's name: Gage), as a result of an accident at work. Gage had an iron bar of 110cm that, from a cheek, smashed the skull ( from the inside ).

By chance or miracle, Gage remained alive. But what happened in his brain was extremely interesting ( for science, much less to him ) . Before the accident, he was balanced, polite, clever and shrewd in business. After that, Gage became bizarre, defiant, unable to make profitable decisions for himself or to plan for his future as a social being. This is due to a lesion in the prefrontal cortex.

From this discovery it was realized that there are, in our brain, some areas that "manages" emotions and others for logic (although some have been used for both functions) . Gage was no longer able to have its own sake, nor to perceive pain. The part, so to speak, of his emotional brain does not work anymore, or at least work only partially and very bad. He was able, however, to perform all the logical operations of which he was capable before. So the logic in his brain, didn't receive any damage.

There are a sum of other scientific evidences of the importance of emotions and, more in deep, impulses into the development and maintenance of intelligence that only a part of the science, inside Artificial Intelligence field, continues to ignore.

Without emotions, any AI model can't "think to itself" and then be really intelligent. And if you want to say more, I could also say that emotions are the "reinforcement" that led humans build new parts of their mind to work with logic, and the consciousness is the counterpart of emotions, and is a "reinforcement" too, that natural selection brought to combat against emotions and then balance their exceeds (emotions, alone, can harness the logic of our mind and bring us to make choice that lead us to prove pleasure soon, despite what could be better for the future, but this is a more difficult part of the matter; if you want to go in deep, please wait for a couple of week to take my book "Biological Behavioural Model", or ask for information to some experts of Evolutionary Psychology).

What I want to say is that I could answer to the thirst question of the thread: if we continue to think that intelligence is only logic, not few months, but neither a billion of years could be enough to fulfil the goal of creating a virtual human mind.

Bravo, Tutorial Doctor, you started from the right place. You said "We discern the difference between wrong and right", and this is the main difference between "learn" and "understand". All our current AI models, I refer to the learning machines and all the models that use neural networks, are able to learn things, not to understand them.

Let me introduce you to an example I've made in my blog (it's in Italian, but I'm just translating it in English): there are three reigns: the reign A, the reign B and the reign C. The first two are alwasys in war one each other, while the last one is unwarlike, and all its resources are driven toward scienses.

Suddenly, an earthquake shakes the ground in the realm A. There are collapsing buildings, thousands of deaths. Let us now give the "meaning" that the subjects of the three kingdoms do to the same event, namely the earthquake just happened.

In the realm A, certainly they will define it as "the catastrophe" and will remember that event certainly for so long as an "extremely negative event" The kingdom B, for its part, will define that earthquake as "a blessing from heaven" and it certainly will remember it for a long time "as the Divine that punished their warlike enemies". It 's very likely that the event has then changed the fortunes of war. So, for the subjects of the kingdom B the earthquake just happened is an "extremely positive event"

The subjects of the kingdom C, finally, define the event as an "extremely interesting event" because, with the subsequent large aftershocks that followed the big one, they have improved their understanding of the seismic event in general. Then they will remember it as an event "very positive" and appreciate the great contribution it made ??to their knowledge of the planet.

So, what is the real meaning of that hearthquake? Which of the three reigns gave it the effective meaning? I want to go deeper in the issue: do you really believe that a thing or an event could really be valued by logic? Is Logic able to say that an event is good or bad? Neither in thousands of years this could happen. Simply because only emotions can let use "decide" what is wrong and what is good. But good and wrong are things that we can define only with a point of view. Hearthquake, collisions of planets or the flutter of a butterly are only events for logic, nothing more.

If someone of you wants to go in deep and continue with me this topic, I'll be happy, because I'm developing (maybe) the thirst AI model that takes into account the main discovers of biology and psychology.