Another aspect of malleability: How much can the structure and activity of the brain be influenced using means that we presently considered external or environmental? These influences would include sensory inputs and inputs through the blood.
Seemingly, controlling sensory inputs, and controlling the blood supply would permit a vast degree of control over the activity of the brain.
I am opening this thread to test the hypothesis that SuperIntelligence is plausible but that Whole-Brain Emulations would most likely become obsolete before they were even possible.
Further, given the ability to do so, entities which were near to being Whole-Brain Emulations would rapidly choose to cease to be near Whole-Brain Emulations and move on to become something else.
I'll let people fire back with discussion and references before presenting more evidence. My hope is to turn this thread into something publishable in the end.