Saying "you cannot" is awfully gutsy.
True, let's say that I'd bet my house on it not being done in my lifetime.
To quote the article, "The map is not the territory, but you can't fold up the territory and put it in your glove compartment." Eliezer's point is not that we should discard all our higher level models. Of course you can't feasibly build a working 747 using a subatomic particle model. Of course you need to use higher level models if you want to get any useful work done. His point is that we need to recognise that they are models; that the universe does not really work with different rule sets for different levels.
A street directory of your town isn't actually your town. It is important to understand this, so you don't end up trying to go to your friend's house by jumping up and down on the appropriate page. But that doesn't mean you should throw the street directory away.
Today's post, Reductionism was originally published on 16 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Qualitatively Confused, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.