TLDR: Sensitivity to initial conditions of beings at the micro or atomic level means the system is too chaotic to make (mathematical) predictions at that level, so viewing the system as a (macroscopic) whole is more reliable when looking at the maths of causal prediction.

The only interesting part to me: "Brain-imaging experiments are being planned in Madison and New York, where Hoel has joined the lab of the Columbia neuroscientist Rafael Yuste. Both groups will examine the brains of model organisms to try to home in on the spatiotemporal scales that have the most causal control over the future. Brain activity at these scales should most reliably predict future activity. As Hoel put it, “Where does the causal structure of the brain pop out?”