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
A long time ago, my old therapist asked me what I thought would happen after I died. I told him I didn’t know and was ok waiting to find out when it happened. He pressed me on it and I said “ok, either the big switch flips and that’s it, or something soul-like survives, or the human mind dilates my final moments into an eternity because it cannot comprehend non-existence.” And then he changed the subject.
This reminds me of that.
or the human mind dilates my final moments into an eternity because it cannot comprehend non-existence.
Gawdamm I never thought of that possibility. You’ve broken my brain sir/ma’am. I’m going to be useless for the rest of the day contemplating this.
Based on the anesthetic I had a few years ago it’s probably not the third thing, but the therapist was annoying me.
“She was overcharging”
— Sebastian
Consciousness barely lasts a couple seconds without bloodflow though. Clearly a clickbait title that is intentionally misleading.
We don’t really know what consciousness is to begin with. Some philosophers even speculate that everything might have some kind of consciousness. In that case, your consciousness might go on forever, but you’d have no physical reality. No senses or anything.
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.
If you do get merged though, don’t tell Janeway.
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.
I’m not looking forward to dying.
I’m fine with afterwards, it’s the process that I really, really don’t want to deal with. I’ve been dead before, we all have, it was fine. We’ll be fine, you won’t worry or feel bad at all, for like… forever. But man, I really don’t want to be locked in my body in a hospital bed for 3 weeks with inadequate painkillers and no way to do anything about it.
