11 thoughts on “Resurrection”

1. Interesting analysis but a haircut and some mumbling that can bring a person back to life probably wont have any issues dealing blood loss and tissue decay.

2. It’s all about entropy and irreversible processes. They are tied into the Arrow of Time.

   1. What I am trying to say is that Rand’s philosophical misconception is in the focus on “state” rather than “state transitions.”

      Certain state transitions have vanishingly small probability — the proverbial “putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

      1. No one would claim it’s going to happen randomly.

         1. As an example:

            Eventually, we will have a “really good” understanding of the human brain and body. Almost certainly, we will eventually be able to create both, and read and write to the brain.

            It is likely possible to infer a brain’s current state using a detailed scan of the electrical signals emitted throughout the brain’s life. In other words, if you had a constant high res eeg of your entire life you could likely write that to a brain (that you created with read/write access in step one).

            Given that, with “really good” technology and an obscene energy/materials budget you could build a radio telescope that watched through a sliver of a black hole’s event horizon and could look back in time. You could record a brain’s life, and write it into a new brain. Then you just wake him up.

            So we will all be resurrected someday, most likely. If I can spend a few seconds and come up with something plausible, imagine what our god-children a million generations from now will be able to do.

   2. Life is negentropic. There is no physical reason in an open system that it can’t go on indefinitely.

3. My point was that whether dead/alive was a binary state is not asking the right question. A more interesting question is whether the state transitions between dead and alive go in both directions. My answer to that is, no, not really because a true definition of death is to move far enough along an irreversible thermodynamic process that restoring the alive state becomes statistically or computationally or thermodynamically or even quantum mechanically impossible.

   Sure, the alive state could in theory be maintained indefinitely by expending enough energy, but even there, errors or other forms of irreversible degradation occur on the system to eventually cross over into the dead state from which there is no return.

   There is a difference, a binary-state difference between resuscitation from a kind of stasis or suspended animation resulting from a cold-water drowning and Hollywood zombies who are reanimated from decaying flesh.

   1. My answer to that is, no, not really because a true definition of death is to move far enough along an irreversible thermodynamic process that restoring the alive state becomes statistically or computationally or thermodynamically or even quantum mechanically impossible.

      Shockingly, that is not different from my point in the piece. Information death is the only true death.

      I know this sounds like a crazy idea, Paul, but go back and actually read my piece. If you did, then try again, for comprehension, before criticizing it.

4. “You will not die.” is the first lie and most people still believe it and most religions teach some variation on it. Resurrection can only happen after you’re dead. Anything that appears so just means you were not completely dead. This is one reason they sometimes leave the body out until it smells of decay before burying or why some caskets included bells.

   We can’t even define life, but we know it when we see it… except that some are fooled by Eliza software.

   The human body was meant to live forever and science is now puzzling out why it doesn’t. They will not solve this puzzle even though the answer was given thousands of years ago… the wages of sin is death. To dust you will return.

   1. they sometimes leave the body out until it smells of decay

      Maybe Trump supporters do that. Normal people, no.

5. Off-topic question for all you trans-humanists. Can I bring my herding dog into a Target bathroom? She self-identifies as human.

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