Scientist proposes new plan to "resurrect" the dead with a Dyson Sphere, kind of

Even cryonics is basically just a way to ensure your body will continue to carry a carbon footprint for decades or centuries after death just for a near-zero shot at resurrection. It takes a lot of energy to keep a body in deep freeze for that long.

Yeah, there’s a whole lot of fear behind all of these attempts at “defeating” death. And even more to fear for those who aren’t powerful enough to benefit from the attempts.

And, no, it won’t be available for all. There will always be a reason.

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As some commenters point out, there’s no end of distopyan scenarios where immortality plays a big part. Personally I would:
a) not be worried for a second, this is a pie in the sky having a pipe dream, and
b) have some of what this dude is smoking - make it a pound, please.
Still, some immortals aren’t half badass, mind you.

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I have a Dyson vac and it sucks too.

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Until they finally settle all the philosophical questions (heh) I figure it would be a hell of a lot easier to just live your life and then, you know, die.

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Futurists don’t always get it wrong. A bomb that a plane can carry that can destroy a whole city, or civilization entirely? Preposterous!

It’s not clear that a self-improving AI will not be similar game-changer, hence Nick Bostrom’s work at FHI.

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Their efforts in this particular field haven’t been making much headway though.

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Nobody wants to make deals with their souls nowadays…

bedazzled the devil GIF

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I’d prefer this;

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I mean, if you’re going to say Nanotechnology with a straight face, sure. Just make sure you reverse the polarity of the tachyon emitters while you’re at it.

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Spider Jerusalem has some foglets he wants to talk with you about…

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I’ve never understood the whole upload your brain into a computer thing. Why would I care if there’s some entity acting exactly like me after I’m dead? These things rarely seem to address consciousness, which is kind of what I consider “me”…

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I think it’s more that the people proposing those ideas disagree with you about what makes a system conscious, or count as “you.”

It’s one thing if you believe there is some immaterial soul that makes you uniquely you, but otherwise, you’re a complex pattern of matter and energy whose exact composition is constantly changing. Also, physically even the idea of “the same atoms vs different atoms” is nonsense, quantum mechanics leaves no room for that, there’s no way to claim you are made of the same parts from Planck interval to Planck interval, let alone throughout your life. So which part of the structure/pattern that constitutes your body and brain is what makes you “you”? And why do you believe it can never be reproduced in another substrate?

Okay, so to get this whole immortality deal, you have to:

  • Act as if an omnibenevolent intelligence is going to arrive on earth really soon and solve all your problems.

  • Take part in an elaborate post-death ritual so that your body and mind can be restored to full health and eternal youth as soon as the above happens.

  • Invest a lot of time and money making the conditions for the above events come to pass.

  • Be sure to write your personal account of how you think this is going to happen, and use your life story to promote the above so that it will happen sooner.

This really is just Christianity with the serial numbers filed off, and a sci-fi paint job, isn’t it?

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The “teletransportation paradox” has some bearing on this question.

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So with option C… I’m dead but the world still has to put up with someone who resembles me in every way? lose/lose

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Are we looking at a Putin-ordered, techno-conman’s PP presentations? “I’m too rich and powerful to die, so I order you to…”

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I don’t think you need to bring in the concept of souls. As @Elmer’s link to the teletransportation paradox illustrates, the problem is that the consciousness in the computer will not be you.

If this technology works perfectly and you can download your entire personality into a computer where it lives just like in a real body, and then you, the original, die, you will still be dead. Yes, there will be a conciousness in a computer that will think of itself as you, because it remembers everything you remembered up to the point of upload, but it will not be you. From the perspective of the copy you will have lived on in the computer, from your perspective a copy was made of you and then you died.

So this is not a way to achieve personal immortality, although it is a way to achieve immortality from the perspective of everyone but yourself.

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Let me make a wish on my Monkey’s Paw…

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