If NASA simulate physics (with programming) precisely enough to accurately calculate what will happen when they send a rocket into space, can biologists simulate the human body to discover what will happen when, for example, new medicine is introduced to it?

Question

I was thinking a reinforcement learning algorithm could be a trained in a simulated environment to find a cure for cancer, testing how every which complex process of a new medicine or even nanotechnology might react to its environment. Am I way off?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Rocketry is taking inert objects and pushing them around, mathematics is great at accounting for that.

Simulating the body is much harder because it contains life, things that do what they want and go where they want in enough instances to not make it possibly to fully simulate a body and what reactions it would have any time in the near future.

Math is great at telling you how things happen *after* choices are made….not great at telling you what will happen *before* choices are made. The more choices you add, the worse and harder it gets.