It's more like //This is what I mean for this code to do

And then hoping that 1) that is what should be done 2) that is what it actually does 3) that it doesn't do anything else and 4) that it does said task in a clever or efficient manner.

Welcome to real life software development. All complex software performs unexpectedly.

Emulation is difficult because hardware specs are often not available and when available do not perfectly describe the actual hardware.

In real life everything is not perfectly documented. In real life documentation is shit and source code is not available. In real life the programmer does not perfectly understand the functions he calls. In real life the programmer guesses and makes mistakes and calls it good enough when it can usually get the job done. In real life software and algorithms are shit.

Unless human progress stops, mankind will eventually create a smarter-than-human computer or a smarter-than-current-human human. That class of computer or that class of human will help create an even smarter computer and or human. And that process will continue until the current class of humans, if they still exist will not be intelligent or efficient enough to contribute anything to help continue that process.

You're taking it to the extreme ignoring all real world factors.

Yes, as a thought experiment, the human brain, because it is able to, although extremely inefficiently, perform basic arithmetic and logic operations, could emulate any infinitely complex hardware running any infinitely complex software if all information about the hardware was available and correct and humanly understandable and if the software was available in human readable form and if there was an unlimited means to manually store data and unlimited time to compute and perfect computation accuracy and unlimited ability to focus on said task.

But the converse is true as well I'm afraid. Not only can humans """THEORETICALLY""" emulate computers, but computers can right now in real life accurately emulate a portion of a mammal brain.

By the way, the idea you are describing is called the church-turing thesis. Sure any computational device can theoretically emulate any other, but it's theoretical for a reason. All external factors can not be reproduced. If a computer does calculations based on yesterday's weather, if I don't have yesterday's weather, then those computations can not be emulated.

From the Wikipedia article on Emulation: In a theoretical sense, the Church-Turing thesis implies that any operating environment can be emulated within any other. However, in practice, it can be quite difficult, particularly when the exact behavior of the system to be emulated is not documented and has to be deduced through reverse engineering. It also says nothing about timing constraints; if the emulator does not perform as quickly as the original hardware, the emulated software may run much more slowly than it would have on the original hardware, possibly triggering time interrupts to alter performance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator

That's the point. All humans are more error prone than computers. That's is why even with unlimited time, which we do not have, humans can not execute many of the algorithms that they write. It's just vividly more apparent in a person such as myself. :-P

That is still not the case. I can write algorithms to solve math equations which will consistently arrive at the correct solution. But if I attempt to either manually execute those algorithms or just solve the problems using my own knowledge or even with the aid of a math book, I will consistently make mistakes. The brain is a computer with different advantages and disadvantages than a silicon computer. Humans are better at performing some calculations such as writing algorithms and computers are better at other calculations such as executing algorithms. But those advantages can shift over time as humans and computers continue to change. Without computers, we would not have been able to execute many of the calculations which have led to a higher quality of life. So long as humans and computers are able to work together to improve one another, we will continue to approach the singularity. Hell, if there are breakthroughs in biological engineering, it could come as a result creating a smarter class of human which will in turn be able to create even smarter humans.

Bullshit. I, me, myself write code in which I know what it does, but I have no idea how it does it because I didn't write the implementation. I could write code which loops through all the FLAC audio files in a folder, opens each one, converts each one to an mp3 file and then saves the mp3 file to the disk. Do you think I could convert a FLAC file to an mp3 file on paper? No fucking way. I could study how the algorithm works, but I guaranty that I would never in all of my life be able to convert my FLAC files to mp3 on paper. I would also not be able to write on paper how to read or write data from a disk. If I made a graphical user interface for the program, I would not be able to calculate on paper how the thousands of pixels on the screen are activated and deactivated to display and move the window. I understand what my algorithm does, but outside of a simple loop, I have no idea how it works and I need not give a shit.

"So the same would apply to humans, right? So it would be impossible to write a program that could solve a problem that you, the programmer, could not solve.

Like, for instance, it would be impossible to write a computer program that could beat you at chess. ;-)"

The point is that it is possible for the programmer to write an algorithm which he can not by himself execute. Sure, the theoretical unlimited combined knowledge and manpower of all mankind MIGHT be able to do it manually, assuming that those humans are somehow less susceptible to error than a processor, which is unlikely. Our combined knowledge is greater than any individual.

If you're talking in absurd terms, of course AI can't create anything we can't create, because we created it and anything it creates is therefore a derivative of us. But in those terms the first single celled organism is just as capable of duplicating all the achievements of mankind. Not only that, but it also means that any individual is not any more intelligent than that single celled organism. We as a society will create an AI that is not smarter than all of mankind, but rather, is smarter than any individual. Then it, with our help or with the help of others like itself, will create an even more intelligent AI. This will continue for a few generation until humans are no longer aiding in the progress. Sure the result is a derivative of our knowledge and we could theoretically repeat the process, but the AI will be more capable than us in the same way that we are more capable than the first single celled organism.

This is completely possible and plausible. The Blue Brain project already emulates a portion of brain tissue correctly. It's just a matter of time before a whole human brain is emulated. And then it's just a matter of time before a genius brain is emulated. Not smarter than all at first, but smarter than most. Eventually a better than human emulation, if you can still call it emulation at that point, will be created. Then the singularity will begin.

No, the programmer can not solve the problem with pen and paper. It requires the hardware that is designed and built by other people. It requires the libraries that are written by others. It requires the electricity that is provided by others. The programmer would die long before he could complete the algorithm on paper and the programmer does not understand all the subsystems required to make the algorithm accurately and proficiently run. In the same way, a team of AI computers, each with their own specialty could design better hardware and software that one AI would not be able to solve by itself.

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