OT: We're all gonna die

[Nightjar]

He died and was put into a tomb.

[whisky-dave]

In the modern world you'd need a body to prove it.

[Roger Hayter]

Yes and no ...

[Nightjar]

Plenty of murderers have been convicted without a body.

[whisky-dave]

That isn't relivant and I don;t think Jesus was murdered anyway.

[Max Demian]

Even if it was technically feasible it would just be a *copy* of him that lives forever - he would still die with his brain.

[Nightjar]

That would probably be the verdict if somebody were nailed to a cross and stabbed in the side with a spear these days. OTOH, rising from the grave is more associate with zombies.

[whisky-dave]

Would it, I assumed that the punishment Jesus allegedly got was legal as it was enforced by the romans of the time.

So the devils work then, I should have known ;)

[Max Demian]

No, it was a judicial execution by TPTB.

[Roger Hayter]

However, it might prove necessary to change the law on this point.

[Roger Hayter]

The current Imperial Power would probably kill him with a drone. In which case it would probably be extra-special-judicial killing, and not murder.

[Rob Morley]

He will turn into an evil megalomaniac - I've seen the movie.

[Max Demian]

The law on the definition of death is irrelevant. It's a matter of whether anyone would go through with the procedure if they knew it was just a copy of them that survived.

[Roger Hayter]

Not sure why. *If* a machine can be given all the information needed to duplicate one's mind then there is no obvious reason why it should not provide complete continuity. Problems only arise if more than one iteration is run, then you have two divergent selves. But there is nothing special about the original from the information POV.

[Nightjar]

That would not justify the manner of his death, were it to happen today. Cruel and unusual punishments are a breach of Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[Max Demian]

OK. You are put to sleep for the procedure, and your 'self' is put into several machines (and maybe some biological entities too). Which one do you wake up in? What will each entity think of the others if it meets them? Will each one think it's 'the one', and the others are copies? What if one of your others selves does something bad? Will you be displeased?

It's like saying that we live on after death in the minds of other people, any works of art we have done, or as social media data.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment" - Woody Allen.

When people say they want to live on after their death, they have a clear conception of what it is they want to survive - and it's something singular and continuous with their present selves.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Interesting concatenation of 'justify' and 'Declaration of human rights'

[Tim Streater]

They are also a breach of the Bill of Rights.

[Tim Streater]

I doubt if it is even known whether this is possible.

[Martin Brown]

Sounds like at least one Russian oligarch is willing to give it a go. It may hold more promise than lopping off the head filling with antifreeze and dunking it in liquid nitrogen which is the only other deal on offer.

This sounds to me like a nightmare even if it did work and you got woken up a few millennia later cured of whatever ailment you had but in a completely unfamiliar world with all your friends and relatives gone.

It is a *very* big if. Just reading all the network connections of a human brain would be a challenge and as yet we haven't built a computer that can adequately simulate a human brain to put the model into.

Until we can simulate accurately a human brain ab initio in silicon (or some other computational technology) the chances of capturing the right information to transfer consciousness are negligible. It may even be impossible if Roger Penrose's conjectures about it are right.