"Circuitry can imitate understanding, once that understanding occurs"

Ah - once again we stumble on the semantics....

Once upon a time, Man was defined as 'the only tool making animal' ... till those pesky field workers came up with documentation of monkeys washing potatoes in the sea, using sticks to poke ants out of nest, killing young babies, and all that stuff.

So it became necessary (if one wanted to progress and not just deny it all) to rethink the semantics of many concepts, such as what is a 'tool', what is 'making of a tool' - is biting off a length of twig 'tool-making', just what is 'learning' anyway - do we analyze it on the basis of observed external outputs, and which ones, and how do we measure them, it goes on - once all that 'convoluted nonsense' was just for Philosophy students, now the damn cat is out of the bag and many scientific fields have to grapple with these confusing and often apparently contradictory concepts.

Emergent behavior is just as counter-intuitive as quantum theory, and yet many people are able to happily accept the unquestioned existence of invisible omnipotent entities 'beyond all human understanding' (I was brought up Fundamentalist Lutheran, you see!).

The emotional problem arises when we come up slap bang against something that we know (based on life experiences - it's all right - we already know about the sky fairies!) cannot be happening cause it does not make sense in light of our previous experience - we've also just gotten used to those pesky sleight of hand magicians over the centuries, you see...

I remember the look of amazement/horror on the face of my very young goddaughter who had refused to believe that 'the big sandpit' - her term - called 'the beach' existed till she first physically experienced it. "yeah mum, you're pulling my leg again" was always her attitude prior to that moment ... :-) She loves it now ...