• SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I mean, you won't be coming back from the dead. It would be akin to a clone of you, containing your memories. But the neurons and cells that comprised you will still be dead as fuck.

      • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        no it's definitely a replica, the old one was destroyed entirely and rotted away like 30,000 years before the sphere dumb ass

        But, what if we gradually replaced small amounts of neurons and let the brain adapt over time, that's an interesting thought experiment

    • vsaush [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      If you had a non-conscious coma for a few days but came back fully after, did you die and is the next person inhabiting your body not you? Many of your cells will die and be replaced - neurons are a notable exemption - yet you are still you and call your meat your body no matter how many cells are replaced. But, surely, even your neurons will replace the atoms that make it up over time. You can never step in the same river twice and all that, you will never have this EXACT configuration of atoms and cells that you do right now. But you wouldn't hesitate to recognize you as a continuation from yesterday to tomorrow despite this. And at a high level, you recognize yourself in a photo in the past even though you and that person may have different memories (certainly, current you has more than yesterday you) so in order for "you" to be around you don't even need exactly the same memories. At varying levels, we all accept that you don't need things to be exactly the same in order for your "youness" to be recognized (you don't need the exact same atoms, you don't need precisely the same cells, you don't need exactly the same network of neurons, etc.)

      If the only thing that counts as you is this particular configuration, then why couldn't you bring someone back from the dead? If all you are is quantum state vectors and some function over time describing their change, why do those have to be computed by the physical universe instead of a dyson sphere? In this view, "you" isn't a process that has to be unique and sequential, "you" could be distributed and parallel - there can absolutely be many of "you" running around all with equal claim of being you.

      There is something to the fact that we are all doomed to die and even if we survive this century and go on to construct technological wonders that can resurrect us in 1000 years, we will have lived and died and something will have been lost in the intervening time. Even if we can't exactly put our finger on what... a soul? The continuity of consciousness? Something does indeed seem to be lost.