PLEASE just stop complaining about "moving the goalposts" when the issue is your own lack of clarity of both expression and reasoning. WHAT is the distinction between "simulate" and "predict"? You said neither by the way, you said "evaluate".

> ANY physical system can be evaluated to ANY DEGREE of accuracy by a computer

It's completely SENSELESS to claim that they are distinct, because in order to EVALUATE or SIMULATE the physical system you will need a FUNCTION which COMPUTES the STATE of the system at a given point in time. The only POSSIBLE distinction between SIMULATING and PREDICTING would be the time taken for the computation, but that is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT as long as it is finite.

Again, your own source says:

> We CERTAINLY don’t have ANYTHING CLOSE to a complete UNDERSTANDING of how the basic laws actually play out in the real world

How does that square with your claim above?