So Ralph Merkel defines information theoretic death as:
A person is dead according to the information theoretic criterion if their memories, personality, hopes, dreams, etc. have been destroyed in the information theoretic sense. If the structures in the brain that encode memory and personality have been so disrupted that it is no longer possible in principle to recover them, then the person is dead. If they are sufficiently intact that inference of the state of memory and personality are feasible in principle, and therefore restoration to an appropriate functional state is likewise feasible in principle, then the person is not dead.
Is that really all it is? So are you the same person you were before you cryogenic suicide? Is reanimation all it takes?.
Did Kurzweil end up having to download your sentience from Google Immortality (tm). Do you really believe that all we are is captured in this mechanical model?
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A person is dead according to the information theoretic criterion if their memories, personality, hopes, dreams, etc. have been destroyed in the information theoretic sense. If the structures in the brain that encode memory and personality have been so disrupted that it is no longer possible in principle to recover them, then the person is dead. If they are sufficiently intact that inference of the state of memory and personality are feasible in principle, and therefore restoration to an appropriate functional state is likewise feasible in principle, then the person is not dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatio…
So Merkel is one of Kurzweil's people, out there at Moffett Field, Singularity U.
Is that really all we are, a web of neuronal synapses?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse
And then this long-term-potentiation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_…
Is that really all it is? So are you the same person you were before you cryogenic suicide? Is reanimation all it takes?.
Did Kurzweil end up having to download your sentience from Google Immortality (tm). Do you really believe that all we are is captured in this mechanical model?
https://www.tuscl.net/?page=post&id=5151…
SJG