The news was presented at the AAAS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Anna Fowler presented a synthesis of dozens of studies on near-death experiences and neuroelectrical activity around cardiac arrest. - https://particle.news/story/aaas-presentation-argues-consciousness-may-persist-minutes-to-hours-after-clinical-death
I assume the most basic scenario that we’re just complex patterns of self referencing data (electrical activity), your conciousness can cease during anethstetic or some types of coma or rare cases of temporary brain death and start right up again no problem, if someone replicates a close enough copy of you then that’s got an equal claim to your continuity as the you that wakes up in the morning, even if you’re still alive both of the yous are you, the yous could even be merged again so long as no data is destroyed the new hybrid you would have a completely valid claim to both continuities that emerged following the intitial seperation.
TLDR: You’re no more special than a videogame save file and that’s fantastic because it makes it really easy to be immortal or get resurected.
How could I get resurrected, what mechanism are you proposing?
Well if you’re just data all someone would need to do is re-create that data within some unknown (but presumably within the range of what gets inflicted by head trauma) error margin. Depending on how the universe works that could inevitably happen someday if it goes on forever (along with shakespear), alternatively some future civilization might run an ancestor simulation or maybe they just have an immense quantity of resources and decide to try and simulate every possible human conciousness.
All of these are highly unlikely or far future but you don’t have to experience the intervening time.
So if you “recreated my data”, would that be a clone of me, or would my consciousness “jump to it”
And if the latter, how does that work?
The idea is that your conciousness isn’t magical or special or something that needs to jump anywhere, I save a game, I turn off my pc for a few million years, move the save file to a different computer, start it up and the game continues.
Problem with that: It is impossible to transfer a file. The best you can do is copy it and delete the original.
So how do you upload a human brain and be sure that’s you and not a copy.
The idea is there is no difference, if its a copy they are both validly you. Or to put it another way there is nothing to transfer beyond the data.
If you do get merged though, don’t tell Janeway.