Life After Death Is Impossible, Says Scientist

[Brian37]

Even a perfect copy is only a copy until it's had it's very first very own experience - which we assume..since it's conscious, will be immediately upon coming into existence.  Then it's no longer even a copy of you.  It's on the same footing as everyone else you know.  Broadly similar, but possessing different life experiences.

Not to be morbid, but for example only, if one could take a time machine back to 1932 Germany, get Hitler's DNA, bring it back to the modern world, with the same outcome of the war happening back then, use artificial insemination to make a baby from that DNA today, that baby would not grow up with the same life experiences. It would be a completely separate copy with it's own different personality consciousness. 

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade here. There is lots of promising science humans are working on. But some things simply will never be a reality. I remember a few years ago when NASA put out the article about the "warp drive" depicted in Star Trek saying it was "plausible". Si fi fans went ape shit with joy thinking it would be a future reality. They ignored the part of the article where NASA said, "ON PAPER ONLY". They said it would be hardly pragmatic in reality because of the sheer amount of energy it would require to achieve. 

Can we extend life? Most certainly. Will new medical technology cure things we once thought we could not? Sure. But there will never be a "forever" for our individual consciousness. Humans would do far better focusing on fixing what we can while we exist than chasing utopias that will never exist. I am fine accepting my finite life. I certainly want to live as long as possible, but I will never fool myself into thinking my consciousness is capable of surviving the death of my brain.

[The Grand Nudger]

Are they?  Not according to IIT.  Resurrecting you is simply restoring a pile of decomposed matter into the last living state of some dead organism.  

Restoration is not replication—you will never end up with two Mona Lisas by restoring the original.

According to IIT, if you want to pursue the analogy, you do end up with two Mona Lisas.  

The original, all of it's own individual instantiation and intrinsically actual content....and the restored mona lisa, with all of the same for itself.  It doesn't actually matter that they occupy the same canvass any more than me standing in Mary Todds house makes me Lincoln.

- but your meat fairy isn't going to use the same canvass for your resurrection body at any rate.

[Irreligious Atheist]

What if we're in a simulation? Can the programmer program us to have life after death?

[John 6IX Breezy]

It doesn't actually matter that they occupy the same canvass any more than me standing in Mary Todds house makes me Lincoln.

There is nothing beyond the canvas that "occupies" it like a person standing in a house. What are you talking about?

[The Grand Nudger]

You're the one who decided to babble about paintings, John.

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What if we're in a simulation? Can the programmer program us to have life after death?

Not under IIT, no.  It can program something identical to us and we could even assume that it believed itself to be us, but, going with the computer analogy, it would be it's own individual instantiation of conscious programming.

[Brian37]

You're the one who decided to babble about paintings, John.

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What if we're in a simulation? Can the programmer program us to have life after death?

Not under IIT, no.  It can program something identical to us and we could even assume that it believed itself to be us, but, going with the computer analogy, it would be it's own individual instantiation of conscious programming.

I really hate how words used in science get twisted by people. Like how laypeople equate the use of "theory" in science to mean the common usage outside science as being a "mere guess".

I have a hard time with the word "simulation" too. It implies to some a cognition watching over the universe like a computer programmer. But that concept still fails apart when taking infinite regress into account. "If we are a simulation, then what caused that simulation, and what caused that simulation, ect ect ect ect" It still begs the question. 

The universe is not aware of us. It has no capability of caring what happens to life on this planet. It is not a living thing, it is simply the environment we exist in. Just like one can accept that the seasons on our planet are not controlled by a God, or cosmic programmer. Motion isn't always cognitive life, but mere QM and physics. 

I wish I could find the video of  Neil deGrasse Tyson hosting the panel of scientists again. One lady was a M-theorist. And if I am remembering correctly, basically she was ultimately theorizing, that no matter how many dimensions, or parallel universes, or bubble verses(multiverses) that everything is a wave function that bubbles and ultimately will decay back to zero. That to me is mind blowing. But it makes far more sense than old mythology or si fi woo. It is consistent with a very basic statement that nothing lasts forever. 

I hope I am remembering that correctly. 

I would argue there is an "eternity" but not a magic one or cognitive one, or god based one. But merely like seasons cycling. Or like a light switch going from off, to on, burning out, going back to off, quantum twitch, which triggers another wave function leading to the transition from off to on again. There is no problem with infinite regress if you break it up between off and on. 

I find it amazing alone, that everything builds up from the sub atomic level, to the atom level to the molecule level to the macro level. I find it amazing that particles pop in and out of existence too. I find it amazing that things like a neutrino can pass through a solid planet. I find so much about science amazing and how much of a microscopic point our planet is in all that, and how fragile what we have now is.

[Angrboda]

Are they?  Not according to IIT.  Resurrecting you is simply restoring [emphasis added] a pile of decomposed matter into the last living state of some dead organism.  

Restoration is not replication—you will never end up with two Mona Lisas by restoring the original.

How does restoration differ from replication? Define the two for us, please.

[John 6IX Breezy]

How does restoration differ from replication? Define the two for us, please.

The difference is perhaps one of continuity. Restoration is synonymous with repairing and fixing and preserving continuity. Replication is synonymous with duplication and cloning and discontinuity.

[Apollo]

Indeed there is a theory by Leonard Susskind that says information is indestructible. Admittedly, it is way over my head so I am unable to evaluate it. Google it and see what you can make of it.

I found your comment interesting. I had to read a review paper on the philosophy of information a few years ago (and agree it is way over my head as well). But there was a paragraph in that paper that always stood out to me and which I always wanted to go back and review:

"Informational realism arises from Wiener’s conception of information, according to which information is neither matter nor energy, but a third property that constitutes the world. Moreover, Wiener says that information is the content that can be exchanged with the environment to adjust us to it. In this view, the universe, including human beings, is composed of information, matter, and energy" (Adams, 2016).

Viewing information as an entity unto itself is interesting, but observing the universe from the standpoint of information is fascinating. It brings a certain cohesion to everything from consciousness to genetics, over into spacetime. I'm sure Leonard Susskind's theory fits nicely into that framework. (Norbert Wiener was the originator of cybernetics.) 

Reference: Adams, F., de Moraes, J.A. (2016) Is there a philosophy of information? Topoi 35, 161-171. 

The information Susskind is talking about is Entropic information. It's the same information that Hawkins used for his famous Hawkins radiation thesis that describes black holes evaporating over time.  

The idea of entropy goes all the way back to 19th century scientist, Ludwig Botzmann and is the basis of second law of thermodynamics, the law that manifests itself at ever level of our reality. The entropic information is basically various states of particles that make up the matter. As these states change to form new forms of matter (ie, energy changes from one form to another), entropy increases and you are ended up with different set of information. However, the total information of the system (say, universe) remains the same since the total matter (in case of our conversation at hand, the 5% of the universe) remains the same.

Think of this like scrabble pieces. At one point in time you can make up certain set of words using those pieces. But if you then mixes them up in the bag, that particular information (those words you made) are no longer available. However, the individual alphabets remains in constant numbers and can be used to construct other words. If the same pieces were used to make different words then you can only make certain words at any given time.

There is a key element here that has been missing from the conversation and that is time. Even if you take entropic information as the basis for subsequent ideas like holographic universe, this still is irrelevant to conversation of the "consciousness".  The consciousness of one person exists in one specific time. Time, again, is not a fundamental property of nature so it too is an emergent phenomenon.  My grandfather, and his grandfather existed in dimension of spacetime before me. As the matter they were made of got recycled into universe and, say, was used in making part of some other living beings, while part of them just stayed like mud, reconstitution of that same consciousness is not possible as those particle have changed states and have become part of some other living beings and hence consciousness of those living beings. 

Even if you theoretically think of reconstruction of one type of consciousness (my grand father), you cannot possibly theoretically come up with a way of reconstruction of a different consciousness (me or some other guy) since some of the same particles were used to make up both consciousness in two separate living beings at two different spacetime coordinates but since same matter manifested itself in two different set of information in two different spacetime coordinates, it is no longer unique universally. In other words, my consciousness is not a unique thing universally speaking. It is only unique within the coordinates of spacetime where I exist. But the very basis of reconstitution of consciousness implies that it is universal and trumps spacetime (my grand father's consciousness should be reconstructed as should be mine equally at the same time).  This creates a paradox that's impossible to overcome.

[The Grand Nudger]

What do you think the meat fairy would be restoring but not replicating?