How to fake it

The Atlantic magazine asks this question. We quote large amounts of the article.

Could a Computer Think Up as Many Unique Snowflakes as Nature?

Given enough time, enough storage, and enough information on how a snowflake's path affects its growth, the answer is... maybe.

....

while computers can easily model snowflakes, they're missing the natural, unpredictable element to snowflake formation: the way they grow.

"The final shape of a snowflake depends on its complicated growth history," he says. "No two crystals follow the same complicated path. On a computer it would take forever, just because the number of combinations is very large."

.....

Our excerpt above shows the researcher skirting the nature of an infinite with vague phrases like "forever...very large." The fact is any concluding item in an infinite series, is contradictory, because by definite, an infinite has no end. That however is not the impression this report suggests. The concluding last lines of this article:

In other words, a computer could simulate snowflakes, but coming up with just as many unique ones as nature can requires knowing how many permutations are possible at all, of which there would have to be a concrete, albeit astronomically large, amount. "A snowflake's certainly not random," Libbrecht says. "The growth depends on a very well defined temperature and humidity, and we understand some of it."

But understanding the rest of it wouldn't be possible without man-made tools. In his lab, Libbrecht grows tiny hexagons, the smallest of snowflakes. Then, one snowflake at a time, he uses a computer to model what they might become.

The conclusion, in other words--- is that the giraffe on the balcony, -- the incomprehensibility of a real infinite, -- is ignored in this article. I highlight this sentence again, in fact, the concluding one of any cognitive value: 

But understanding the rest of it wouldn't be possible without man-made tools. 

The conclusion in other words ignores the central text of the their own argument, which at least hints at the meaning of the word 'infinite', with a reassuring pat on man's rational, binary, shoulders.