The news was presented at the AAAS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Anna Fowler presented a synthesis of dozens of studies on near-death experiences and neuroelectrical activity around cardiac arrest. - https://particle.news/story/aaas-presentation-argues-consciousness-may-persist-minutes-to-hours-after-clinical-death
We don’t really know what consciousness is to begin with. Some philosophers even speculate that everything might have some kind of consciousness. In that case, your consciousness might go on forever, but you’d have no physical reality. No senses or anything.
Panpsychicism, can’t say that I take too seriously without evidence. I mean how does a rock have consciousness?
I assume the most basic scenario that we’re just complex patterns of self referencing data (electrical activity), your conciousness can cease during anethstetic or some types of coma or rare cases of temporary brain death and start right up again no problem, if someone replicates a close enough copy of you then that’s got an equal claim to your continuity as the you that wakes up in the morning, even if you’re still alive both of the yous are you, the yous could even be merged again so long as no data is destroyed the new hybrid you would have a completely valid claim to both continuities that emerged following the intitial seperation.
TLDR: You’re no more special than a videogame save file and that’s fantastic because it makes it really easy to be immortal or get resurected.
If you do get merged though, don’t tell Janeway.
How could I get resurrected, what mechanism are you proposing?
Well if you’re just data all someone would need to do is re-create that data within some unknown (but presumably within the range of what gets inflicted by head trauma) error margin. Depending on how the universe works that could inevitably happen someday if it goes on forever (along with shakespear), alternatively some future civilization might run an ancestor simulation or maybe they just have an immense quantity of resources and decide to try and simulate every possible human conciousness.
All of these are highly unlikely or far future but you don’t have to experience the intervening time.
So if you “recreated my data”, would that be a clone of me, or would my consciousness “jump to it”
And if the latter, how does that work?
The idea is that your conciousness isn’t magical or special or something that needs to jump anywhere, I save a game, I turn off my pc for a few million years, move the save file to a different computer, start it up and the game continues.
The interesting thing about general anesthesia is that it’s quite unlike dreaming. It’s like you’re just instantly teleported into another place and time without any sense of time having passed in between. You were effectively dead for a few hours from everyone else’s perspective, but for you there was no gap at all. It’s not like there’s a blank section in the film - rather like someone entirely cut out that part and you just jumped instantly to the next act.
I can’t help but wonder if something similar happens when you actually die. By definition you cannot experience being dead, so what if your consciousness just jumps over the being-dead part and continues from whatever is next? Even if there’s a million-year-long queue before you get to respawn, that would still happen instantly from your subjective experience. Perhaps death is only for your physical body, but your consciousness can only continue to have experiences wherever there are experiences to be had.
I think this idea is called quantum immortality.
How could my consciousness continue to exist after the destruction of my brain? What are you proposing makes me?
Your consciousness, feelings, sensory input, and your entire character can be massively affected (even controlled) by the bacteria in your gut (which has its own separate nervous system), or by parasites.
It’s not as simple as measuring the electric signals between neurons in your brain.
What you feel, think and do is often fully controlled by processes that happen elsewhere in your body. And your consciousness just comes up with a reason for your behavior after the fact.
Not sure if that’s more or less scary than oblivion