Thread: Future possibility of reanimation

This is something my brains has been stewing over for a while, and I'm using this forum as a place to flesh out some ideas and start an active conversation.

Hypothetically, let's imagine that sometime in the future a technology is developed that is able to reanimate a person or brain that has been dead for any amount of time. For the point of this argument, it doesn't matter how far into the future, whether it's humans or another intelligent life who develops it, or the technical details of how the reanimation works. This theoretical technology would allow anybody (or everybody) to regain consciousness in some form, whether in a sort of proxy body, or within a digital system. This would effectively be reanimation of a dead person.



The point that I have been mulling over is what it would be like to perceive this as myself, after my death. In my own personal philosophy, I believe that once the body dies, the mind dies with it and basically shuts off. Being reanimated in this fashion would seem to me like waking up in another place instantly after my death. There would be no sense of time lost in between.

Since there would be no sense of time, no boredom, no negatives to "waiting" for this technology, I find it incredibly exciting. I feel like this would become a sort of scientific heaven, in all literal and metaphorical meanings.

I'm not sure if you can transfer one's soul or consciousness to a computer or digital device. That being said, I highly doubt anything like this will ever be possible.. especially in our lifetime. I mean, it would be cool if we could live longer or even forever, but I don't believe humans will be able to achieve that. There will always be life, and death for each being.

I disagree. The human body is nothing but a set of chemicals put together in the right order and memories and identity is just caused by chemical reactions in the brain. So if we can somehow figure out how it works not only can we reanimate dead bodies, but also transfer people's minds to new bodies and be "immortal".
Imagine a world where everyone can live for as long as they like to and whenever they get tired of life they can just decide to die so a new person can be born in their place. I myself think it's the perfect world.
Now I can't say when this might happen but it's not crazy to think it might happen during our lifetime. Just think about how much science has advanced in the last 20 years compared to the last 2000 years.
PS: Take a look at this page.

I do not believe there would be a known time delay. It would be like where we all were the day before our births. The world has been around forever and we just "woke up" in it during the last century.

Another twist to your thesis; if we were to "die" and then be reanimated, lets say, 100 years from now, life as we know it, even only 100 years from now, would be VERY different so there would be some time that one would need to become re-acclimated with life, kinda a learning curve. Not relearning basic functions (walking, talking) but everything around us would be very different.

Also, would you be reanimated into a body of the same age or drastically younger than your original? Would your brain be able to comprehend the new surroundings and retain all the information of another lifetime, let alone multiple lifetimes.

I could go on like this for pages!! :) good topic.

So, if you go with the idea that the consciousness is not a real thing and it's just a set of chemicals and electromagnetic signals, then being reanimated should be possible and would seem like blacking out and coming back awake later.

If you go with the idea that the consciousness exists outside of physics (and yes that is an accepted idea in physics and is argued over a lot) then it would most likely not be possible, unless you could get the consciousness to come back into the new vessel.

That would bring overpopulation to a whole new level.

I guess it would dante. We are gonna have to start populating a different planet here soon.

Originally Posted by kenpachi

I disagree. The human body is nothing but a set of chemicals put together in the right order and memories and identity is just caused by chemical reactions in the brain. So if we can somehow figure out how it works not only can we reanimate dead bodies, but also transfer people's minds to new bodies and be "immortal".
Imagine a world where everyone can live for as long as they like to and whenever they get tired of life they can just decide to die so a new person can be born in their place. I myself think it's the perfect world.
Now I can't say when this might happen but it's not crazy to think it might happen during our lifetime. Just think about how much science has advanced in the last 20 years compared to the last 2000 years.
PS: Take a look at this page.

Prove it.

The reality is that nobody knows how memory (esp memory) works, or what mind and consciousness is.

Saying its "all neurology" is not only just as presumptions as fundamentalist bible thumper.

There is one problem with the initial condition. Let's assume that we can EXACTLY replicate the chemicals and conditions for each tissue and chemical and electrical particle in the human body to create a new body which can retain memory ALONG with the careful craft of placement and construction. However, one thing that cannot be replicated is time, unfortunately time plays a large role in chemical reactions that you're speaking of. I don't mean time in the sense of wine, I mean it in a sense of decay and age, that can NEVER be replicated under the presumption most modern and reputable scientists carry of time itself.