My death is when I permanently stop experiencing life.
Not sure what that means for an ‘Upload’ scenario… I guess he’s just a swamp man of me and he’s alive but I’m not anymore… but I’m not signing up for the digital afterlife anyway.
The article by the Guardian that is linked is very interesting! I can really recommend reading it to people interested in this stuff.
Thanks for recommending the guardian link. Crazy stories in there and an interesting conclusion on what we’re learning about death.
Makes me wonder about organ donations and if the timing for those may change based on newer findings…
Dramatized clickbait headline.
What the article actually says is more like “we might be able to revive you if not too many if your cells have died, even if your heart and brain seem to have stopped.”
AKA they are working on a next tier of CPR.
I wonder how this would play with the whole “Ship of Theseus” philosophical theory of identity, where even though we’re constantly changing out our parts (cells), our sense of continuous self persists. If you suddenly have a hard break in continuity of matter or thought (like with a Star Trek-esque matter transporter or brain death), do you experience life whenever you’re revived or is your consciousness ended and another starts?
As long as your brain mass has not deteriorated you should still have access to at least your long term memory. But in theory it could range from a terrible hangover to amnesia and brain damage, and in that case recovery may take longer and you may end up being a completely different person, as it can already happen with some accidents.
There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.
And this is why I carry an organ donor card prohibiting taking my organs.
Death is a poorly-understood process and I don’t want doctors under extreme time pressure to decide when to end it.
