OpenWorm seems to be a project with realistic goals but unrealistic funding in contrast to the EU’s Human Brain Project (HBP): a project with an absurd amount of funding, with absurdly unrealistic goals. Even ignoring the absurd endpoint, any 1billion Euro project should be split up into multiple smaller ones with time to take stock of things in between.
What could the EU have achieved by giving $50million to OpenWorm to spend in 3 years (before getting more ambitious)?
Would it not have done so in the first place because of hubris? The worm is somehow too simple to be worthy of investigation? The complexity of 300 C. Elegans neurons is way way more than the superficial perception of 300 times the complexity of 1 artificial neuron. 300 real neurons provide way more degrees of freedom than any scientist would like to be dealing with.
$50million on OpenWorm surely would have made significant progress on the methodologies required, without being distracted by the supercomputing sideshow.
OpenWorm seems to be a project with realistic goals but unrealistic funding in contrast to the EU’s Human Brain Project (HBP): a project with an absurd amount of funding, with absurdly unrealistic goals. Even ignoring the absurd endpoint, any 1billion Euro project should be split up into multiple smaller ones with time to take stock of things in between.
What could the EU have achieved by giving $50million to OpenWorm to spend in 3 years (before getting more ambitious)?
Would it not have done so in the first place because of hubris? The worm is somehow too simple to be worthy of investigation? The complexity of 300 C. Elegans neurons is way way more than the superficial perception of 300 times the complexity of 1 artificial neuron. 300 real neurons provide way more degrees of freedom than any scientist would like to be dealing with.
$50million on OpenWorm surely would have made significant progress on the methodologies required, without being distracted by the supercomputing sideshow.
What would you have done with the $50million?