Slashdot Mirror
University Receives $5 Million Grant To Study Immortality
Hugh Pickens writes "Humans have pondered their mortality for millennia. Now the University of California at Riverside reports that it has received a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation that will fund research on aspects of immortality, including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior. 'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer, the principal investigator of The Immortality Project. 'No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology and philosophy.' Fischer says he going to investigate two different kinds of immortality. One is the possibility of living forever without dying. The main questions there are whether it's technologically plausible or feasible for us, either by biological enhancement such as those described by Ray Kurzweil, or by some combination of biological enhancement and uploading our minds onto computers in the future. Second would be to investigate the full range of questions about Judeo, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other Asian religions' conceptions of the afterlife to see if they're theologically and philosophically consistent. 'We'll look at near death experiences both in western cultures and throughout the world and really look at what they're all about and ask the question — do they indicate something about an afterlife or are they kind of just illusions that we're hardwired into?'"
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
I mean, aren't there enough bad people in the world already?
What? Oh, never mind.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
I predict the only thing that will really happen here is that some "scientists" with questionable ethics burn through 5M! Despite their grand claims, there is zero research need here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Good. I have suspected that a long time. Some areas of philosophy may qualify though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Are a good thing.
Why are they funding research that's already been published?
Principal Investigator
Results and Discussion
Sex Also!
"including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior."
Those aren't "aspects of immortality". Those are aspects of religion, mythology, and in some cases -- insanity. What a waste of money.
Indeed. But they are aspects of getting grant money. If you do not mind being unethical.
I find the "near death" nonsense especially fascinating. These people have never heard of one-way situations. As long as you live to tell about it, you have not been dead and know nothing of "the other side", obviously. Kind of like you know nothing about being hit by a bullet when one nearly misses you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Who wouldn't want a grant like that? There's absolutely no possibility of accountability. The notions are so vague and there's so many different views, even among the same religion, about what an afterlife would be like that you can't really be proven wrong. Basically, they weaseled their way into $5 mill with no chance of being asked for results.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Sorry, that type of business is already going well for many. They might not welcome you getting into it as well.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The headline really should specify that it is a private grant to study immortality. We're bound to get some people coming in here to bitch that the federal government is funding this (because after all even reading the summary is a lot to ask for some).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't know who said it--when I heard it it was attributed to Mark Twain but that doesn't seem to be right. At any rate, someone asked a nonbeliever whether he wasn't terrified by the thought of nonexistence after death. He replied, "Not at all. I experienced nonexistence for eons before I was born, and I enjoyed every minute of it."
I wish them luck with their $5 million, but I don't think they'll be any wiser than Omar Khayyam:
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d-
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The body (brain) is quite enough to explain what is observable. That doesn't mean we fully understand it, or that we ever will, but consciousness very obviously arises solely out of the brain.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Well, maybe not; but for those with a moderately open mind, you really should -- before concluding -- examine the works of two people. Dr. Lawrence LeShan and Dr. Daryl J. Bem have done some tremendous work on the subject of ESP. LeShan, in his early years went further, working with some extraordinary people, under genuinely scientific conditions. I simply can't imagine someone reading LeShan's The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist and having anything negative to say.
If ESP ever does prove itself an authentic protocol, then its tendency to allow the mind to accurately observe remote locations could suggest a breach in the presumed dependency of consciousness on the form. I also recommend visiting the CIA's CREST database and searching amongst the many thousands of Remote Viewing documents that have been released. Despite rational assumption, there's more than redaction lines to look at.
This is a fascinating subject and I am not telling anyone to make any assumptions either way, but please look at quality research that's available before making conclusions.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Not at all. The _only_ scientific connection between consciousness, intelligence and the brain is external observation. That is not even enough for a reasonable theory. You should read up on your science.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations.
No, there isn't. Without a mechanism to transfer information outside of the dying brain, it is simply destroyed, and anything else is merely wishful thinking.
Obviously, the body (brain) plays a part (for many the dominant part, it seems), but it is not enough to explain what is observable.
We already know that brain is a biological computer with multiple chemical and electrochemical interfaces to the rest of the body. This is understood very well, and was understood even before people had computers and therefore could not yet compress this explanation into such a short statement. The only things unknown about it are the structure and mechanisms, and it's extremely foolish to claim that it breaks the laws of nature known through Physics and Chemistry.
Any alternative to the above is LESS LIKELY TO BE TRUE than "we are all in The Matrix" or "We are in a dream of a sleeping God" hypotheses, what means that it can not be a part of any realistic philosophy and should be relegated to the realm of fiction. All support for this nonsense comes from superstition and nowhere else.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
A near-death experience is selective oxygen deprivation.
So is the study methodology to put Fundamentalists in a sealed room and slowly remove the oxygen until they have a vision of some sort? If so, I'd like to volunteer Fred Phelps, and I'd like to know where I can contribute to the grant funding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ALInv_wzSQ
I really hope the two people who modded this interesting did so as part of the joke, but I suspect that this is yet another case of mods not even bothering to mouse-over links to sources, let alone read them.
No, there is experimental data as well. Lobotomies are a result of "change the brain, change the intelligence/personality" experiments. There is direct experimental data, not just external observation.
Learn to love Alaska
Most of the great geniuses of recorded history lived when not professing a belief in an afterlife would get you to that afterlife (or lack thereof) more quickly.
Learn to love Alaska
The _only_ scientific connection between consciousness, intelligence and the brain is external observation. That is not even enough for a reasonable theory. You should read up on your science.
LOL. By definition of science, external evidence is both the only source of evidence and sufficient for a theory.
This topic cannot really be studied scientifically, because science is limited to the physical human senses. For those who only believe that what is physical, touchable, viewable etc., this is a great waste of time and money. Whether there is life after death can only be grasped by faith.
Jesus Christ came and made the claim that he is God. The people of his day, especially the religious ones were unbelievably upset by this claim. They were torqued out of shape enough to conspire with the Roman governmental authorities to have Jesus executed. Jesus proved his claim to deity by resurrection from the dead. All religions, but one, are human efforts to reach God. There is only one faith that makes an exception to this. That is the Christian gospel where God becomes a human being in order to make it possible for him to confer eternal life to all humans who are simply willing to believe this. God reaches down to man, rather than man reaching up to God.
Anyone who studies the biblical record of the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ, will realize that Jesus is a physical being, capable of all the normal physical activities normal humans are able to do. There were however also activities which show that Jesus existed not only on the earthly plane, but also a higher spiritual level or dimension. He was no longer subject to time and space in the same way that we are right now. He could materialize in and out of our time–space dimension, which is a technology that most scientists can't even talk about, because they don't believe in any dimensions beyond our own. When he finally ascended into “heaven”, he did not need a thundering rocket, but was quietly lifted up from the earth and disappeared into a cloud. He promised that everyone who believes and trusts him, will at some point in time inhabit a body just like his resurrection body. This body is no longer subject to entropy or decay or death.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there. A good first assumption, but not more than an assumption. The currents state of scientific research is that it is completely unknown what consciousness is and what intelligence is. Both can be described by their effects, but to speculate on where they reside and whether they are generated there is very much premature at this time.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer". Actually we do understand that human minds can do things that computers cannot do, and that is currently fundamental, i.e. not a question of the power of the computer, but a lack of any implementable theory that could make a computer do these things. I have been following the state of AI research for quite some time (and know some people in it personally), and this is what comes out when you ask people on the side or actually read the papers. Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built, yet every healthy human being has strong/true Intelligence. (Never mind the BS some researchers publicly say to get funding.) This is actually a rather strong indicator that either the brain is far more than a "computer" or that intelligence and consciousness are not generated solely/fully by the brain.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not any type of proof. If you damage part of a TV set, it stops to exhibit all of its features, for example may stop to display color. That still does not mean the picture is generated in there. So while the brain plays a part like any good interface does, it is not enough to explain the overall thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Virtually all the great geniuses of recorded history have believed in an afterlife. Some AC on slashdot confidently states otherwise. Who has more credibility - Isaac Newton or Anonymous Coward on the internet?
Neither. This should give you an idea of the state of the art in this area. $5 million isn't going to change things either.
Yeah, usually decomposition, and depending on the humidity levels, mummification. But you won't be around to experience any of that, being dead. You'll have exactly the same point of view as you had before you were conceived. You remember all that stuff from the beginning of the universe until you were born? No. Well that's exactly what will happen after you die, until the end of the universe...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Mr. Templeton was a Presbyterian and a Christian who was also interested in other religions. He became extremely wealthy by stock market investment. He set up the foundation to explore religious topics. His foundation - His choice as to what its goals are for funding research.
Not necessarily.
Necessarily. Having been dead for quite a few minutes myself, but being lucky enough to have been reanimated, I can assure you absolutely nothing happens. No white lights. No angels. Nothing. But then again who are you going to believe - me, who is not trying to sell you anything, or the guys/gals who want you to a) buy their book or b) donate money to their church?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We can try an experiment. If we remove your brain from your head I hypothesise that your consciousness will immediately cease to exists. Let me know when you want to begin.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Mentally and physically the person in my baby picture is already dead. But somehow most people would insist that that baby is me!
Philosophically, you exhibit "perdurance". If you were unchanging for a while, you would be exhibiting "endurance". Even if you can't understand it, you sure can label it.
Then propose a testable hypothesis and we'll do some experiments. The fact is, you got nothin'.
Only an Anonymous Coward would endorse Mitt Romney.
Actually, the other way round. I am just saying we do not know either way at this time. You are claiming we do. That places the burden of proof on you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've been in line at the DMV. Does that count?
I don't see a safe logical path to the implication that consciouness (as opposed to a particular "awareness") is composed of information. While retention of an identity, e.g. memories, would require information transmittal, transfer of consciousness itself (when defined simply as sensation and observance) may not, until we can definitively unify consciousness with an information bearing construct.
Someone had to do it.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there.
No, it's not. TV receives images using a well-known mechanism that is based on well-known properties of electromagnetic waves. TV is not special in being able to receive electromagnetic waves, and TV station produces known and observable electromagnetic radiation that is processed by TVs. Even a person who knows nothing about TVs, TV standards and protocols, can easily discover that there is a big tower on a hill that produces electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between tens of centimeters to meters, and all TVs with antennas display pictures carried by changes in parameters of those electromagnetic waves -- it can be studied by blocking those waves, passing them through a filter, adding noise, etc.
With more sophisticated tools, a person may learn about details of how the images are encoded and how signal is modulated, but the most fundamental piece of knowledge -- that TV receives radio waves that contain encoded pictures -- is immediately evident to any person who is willing to perform research using basic knowledge of Physics, even if such person knows nothing about TVs.
With the brain, there is no BIG TV TRANSMITTER IN THE SKY that has all matter completely unaffected, except for EXTRA-SPECIAL HUMAN BRAINS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SPECIAL. Things don't work that way.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer".
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use! They even occasionally assemble new instances! The only question is, how it can be built USING SOMETHING OTHER THAN EXISTING BRAIN CELLS. And obviously, it's important to understand how it works. However fundamental processes are known very well -- neurons, electric pulses carried by changes in relative concentration of ions, various chemicals involved in the process either directly or indirectly regulating the speed and intensity. On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Can you produce a Nintendo 64 starting from sand crystals and ending with playing a Mario game? Will I have to do it personally on my desk over this weekend, for you to believe that there is nothing magical about it? And if no, then what the hell do you want from scientists to do about a much more complex and much more weird computer, so you will shut up about your religious nonsense?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Isaac Newton also believed in the Philosophers Stone and wasted most of his career on alchemy, not on physics. Excellence in one area does not normally translate into excellence in another. Something, by the way, more than a few engineers should keep in mind before they start opining outside their field.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior.
Near-death experiences have nothing to do with immortality (but it's interesting for another reason). "Belief in an afterlife" is just some story made up for people to cope with death of loved ones (ohhh "they're with God now" and suddenly it's alllllllright), and their own ever-nearing death.
Why not give the money to Aubrey de Grey and/or the SENS Foundation - have some actual research done on the causes of aging and what to do about them. You can say what you like about de Grey, but he's right about one thing: aging should be treated as a disease.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Sorry, but you really do not know the current scientific state of the art. The mind-body problem is currently unsolved by science. Your view is that of a "physicalist". It may or may not be correct, there is no convincing evidence either way. (No, there really is not, ask an expert. I am just an amateur in this game.) Most scientists active in neurology and related areas are not touching the topic, because there is really no evidence either way.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
For $5M I'd tell them whatever they want to hear.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Only an Anonymous Coward would endorse Mitt Romney.
On a side note - We aren't all living forever, but this election season is making it feel like forever.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Your theory is plausible sounding (hybrid between interface characteristics and signal source) but is untestable and thus worthless unless you provide a set of criteria on which to evaluate it.
For example: I theorize that a person's soul is the source of their personality. Thus, if the soul is damaged somehow, the person's personality should change.
I suggest an experiment in which people sign the bottoms of hidden documents. The control group will sign pieces of paper that are blank. The test subjects will sign papers that condemn an innocent person to death, or the cutting of funding to an orphanage. (For the sake of rigor, we should actually carry out whatever horrible act is proscribed by the signed papers)
If the "soul" theory is correct, such soul damaging activities should result in measurable personality changes to the test subjects' personalities without corresponding changes to the control group.
So yeah. I disagree with "we do not know". We "do not know" all sorts of stuff, like why gravity works or why the universe exists, but that doesn't stop us from determining things about them based on their observable characteristics. (i.e. gravity exists and is tied somehow to mass) We can also remove possibilities that fail to show evidence of existence (i.e. there is no ether in space).
We know that almost everything that makes a personality can be explained by various functions of the brain, with the only gaps being left in some of the more complex interactions between our systems of consciousness. We know which part of the brain creates emotion, which part recognizes faces, which part lets us analyze our own thoughts, and a bunch of other things that were once attributed to "the soul".
I just my whole existence, is this bad?
No, it's not. TV receives images using a well-known mechanism that is based on well-known properties of electromagnetic waves. TV is not special in being able to receive electromagnetic waves, and TV station produces known and observable electromagnetic radiation that is processed by TVs. Even a person who knows nothing about TVs, TV standards and protocols, can easily discover that there is a big tower on a hill that produces electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between tens of centimeters to meters, and all TVs with antennas display pictures carried by changes in parameters of those electromagnetic waves -- it can be studied by blocking those waves, passing them through a filter, adding noise, etc.
The reason it's a 'well known mechanism' is we know how to build the thing. In the process of building the thing, we know to do things like block the radio waves to work out how it works. Bring somebody from the 18th century to our time and have him work it out and... nope, he's not going to get it. Which... actually that was the point of that analogy.
However fundamental processes are known very well -- neurons, electric pulses carried by changes in relative concentration of ions, various chemicals involved in the process either directly or indirectly regulating the speed and intensity. On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Has anybody built a working model of a brain that has become conscience?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Not even close.
Maybe at some point, consciousness will be so well understood that it can entirely be explained by the activity of the brain, but not yet.
We're only now getting the outlines of an understanding of dreaming and sleeping, for example. It hasn't been that long that we've been able to identify more than a dozen senses for another example, and there are more yet being discovered.
We can see what the amygdala is doing, but we don't see just how.
We know that it requires the brain, but as far as being located in the brain, there is some evidence of consciousness being distributed. And, it depends how you define consciousness.
We haven't seen consciousness with only a brain, for example. So you can say, "there's no consciousness without a brain" but there's really isn't a lot of evidence of consciousness without a body either, unless you buy the stories of decapitated heads cursing out the executioners. Maybe one of these rich guys will have his brain kept alive in a lab and we'll find out if consciousness exists only in the brain. I would like that. Not that I'd like that for myself, mind, but I like the idea of a disembodied brain of an ultra-rich guy floating in a solution and interacting with the world via computers.
Isn't proprioception a possible case of distributed consciousness, by the way? The sense of touch?
I don't know about this immortality project, though. I can absolutely see the possibility of there coming a time when I've had enough. The existence of this project does demonstrate one thing for sure, though: the rich guys who are funding it sure have a high regard for themselves. Is there any evidence that anybody else wants them around forever? You think their trophy wives are thrilled knowing that Daddy Warbucks is going to last indefinitely? I'm betting there are some progeny that definitely wouldn't approve of them attaining immortality. Immortality would definitely change things.
I can think of at least one very well-known public figure whose life would have been very different if his father had lived forever.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Exactly. The problem is that all that "evidence" the physicalists here put up can at his time not be falsified either and hence is non-scientific by nature. Hence my "we do not know" stance. Actually, the whole debate could be subject to incompleteness. But "the works is physical, hence all observable in it is too" is just circular reasoning and does not cut it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Will his consciousness cease to exist or will his ability to show us it exist cease?
That's sort of a serious part of the question. Does someone's consciousness really cease to exist or just our ability to perceive it.
The number of people who DO report 'near-death' experiences each year is in the six digit range (In a typical year, over 200,000 people report some variation on these experiences in a western medicine style clinical setting - for support of this claim, interested persons mighrt start with: Mauro, James "Bright lights, big mystery".Psychology Today, July 1992, and see where that article's references lead them.). If you want to claim there are 8 million books and churches to match that many living Americans who claim to have had such experiences, go right ahead, but as it stands, your absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Personally, I don't assume that everyone who says they have had a different experience than I have is motivated to lie by money. You do realize that in taking that position, you are revealing something rather unpleasant about yourself?
However, we may want to take your (non) experience as a disproof of the contemporary Pop-Christian style God, as presumably you would have had one of those negative versions of the white light experience so as to induce reform. Logicially then, there is either no afterlife, or there is, but you aren't on the list, or it IS a heaven or Hell thing, but you (of all people) don't need a nudge in the right direction, or it's not a Heaven or Hell type thing so there's no particular need to give everyone a sample.
Oh, and I'm neither selling a book or founding a church, but that does not mean I haven't seen the light. I just don't usually talk about such experiences.
Who is John Cabal?
His TV analogy is not all that far off.
Perhaps things like a lobotomy don't always change personalities but rather the ability to express the personality. I've read of people who were supposedly cured of mental illness in the past by a lobotomy who carefully calculated their behavior long enough to get out from under doctor supervision and commit suicide. We understand how the brain transmits and interprets thoughts better then we do how it creates thoughts.
So, I died and went to Heaven. When I arrived, St. Peter looked me up in his great book. "I see you haven't been entirely good when you were alive. It seems you killed a kitten when you were young. But don't worry. That's not enough to keep you out. However, as punishment, you will have to pleasure this woman for the rest of eternity." At this point, he introduces me to a fat, ugly, smelly old hag. I almost got sick. But hey, I made it to Heaven!
A few months later, with this hideous broad in tow, I ran into CowboyNeal. And he was walking arm in arm with Megan Fox. "Not fair!" I thought. I knew CowboyNeal when he was alive. And I don't see how he rates such treatment. So I want to see St. Peter. St. Peter dusted off his great book and looked at several entries. "It seems", he said, "Megan killed a kitten when she was on Earth as well."
Have gnu, will travel.
"Consciousness and life itself are still not understood at all, so there is room for speculation. "
You are a naked ape and you'll die like an animal. Get used to it.
That's not an answer. And I think you know it as well as I do.
First, I'm quite familiar with computability and Godel's incompleteness theorems, and they have nothing at all to do with the question. There is absolutely nothing in them that implies AI is a fundamentally unsolvable problem. In fact, most AI researchers probably understand those subjects far better than you do - and they still consider AI to be a worthwhile problem to study.
Second, the current state of the art in AI is irrelevant. You didn't just say there were things computers can't currently do. You said there are things no computer can ever do, no matter how powerful. That claim needs to be justified.
Third, AI has actually been making dramatic progress in recent years. After decades of following paths that didn't lead anywhere, researchers have finally found some techniques that enabled major breakthroughs. If you want to see practical applications of that, just look at Watson or Siri or the like. A mere five years ago, both of those would have been science fiction. Today they're real.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
The medical definition, which is quite easy for me since I'm also a physician. Death can be reversible or non reversible. The legal definition of death is the minute I put my signature to the death certificate. Either way clinical death is defined as lack of pulse, blood pressure, breathing deep tendon reflexes, etc. It is identical in both reversible and non reversible cases, which is why efforts are usually taken to reanimate a recently dead person, especially if the death happens in front of medical staff and is not obviously irreversible (example, decapitation, a body that is obviously cold/stiff to the touch, etc).
but we know the brain doesn't 'die' immediately.
The tissue does not "die", however it stops working almost immediately when blood flow stops. The brain consumes huge amounts of oxygen and will immediately deplete any oxygen present in the blood. That's the reason people will suffer "transient ischemic attacks" (sort of like a mini-stroke) even with partial blockages of their carotid arteries - because there is a momentary disruption of blood flow. Now you could argue that a cell that is still alive in that it can maintain the permeability of its cell membrane for the moment, is not technically dead and you are correct. However that cell, at that moment, is not "working". All remaining ATP is being used to try to keep the cell alive, and it has no energy spare to do things like depolarize and transmit signals.
Maybe the angels, lights and funny guy with the beard show up later.
Buddy you are free to believe whatever you want. For me I just remember not finishing a sentence in the ER, and then being ventilated with a crowd of colleagues and nurses around me a few minutes later. There was no passage of time. There was no pain. There was no suffocation. In fact when I "came to" it took me a while to realize what had happened, with the obvious disbelief that it was happening to me. I do remember a certain disconnect from my body and it took a few minutes to register all the poking and prodding that was going on as IV lines were inserted, etc. And after a few minutes the incredible pain from the burns I had from the defibrilator started to be felt. But it's an amazing feeling to not have to do your own breathing. But I wouldn't read more into it than that. At least now I know that death is completely painless, and I'm not afraid for next time. I was taken completely by surprise, so now I figure that no one realizes when they are going to die. Oh they might feel really ill, or they might realize they are in real danger. But there's no "I'm dying" sensation. It just happens, quite suddenly, and just like the exact moment when you fall asleep, you have no idea exactly when it happens. But all the religious stuff I chalk up to people making shit up because they want/need attention, or they have to justify their beliefs to others in order to convince themselves that it's "true".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, that is sort of the question now isn't it?
I mean forget about all this mumbo jumbo on spirit and soul or afterlife, if a person is clinically dead, can they still think or experience something on any level? If so, to what extent and should we reconsider how we treat these people?
On the other hand, we do not bother to much with restoring cognitive brain function in traumatic head trauma cases where the brain is damaged significantly. We do attempt to retrain them if possible to make use of other parts of the brain for the same type of skills and function. I know a guy who laid a bike down and impaled his head, through the helmet, on an Iron rod sticking out the side of a telephone pole. They said he is a 1 percent'er, as generally only one percent of people survive something like that and he made a decent recovery. Still has issues with balance sometimes and is a complete ass at times, but he was a prick before the accident too. His mother says he's changed, I think he's more of an ass more often, but most people can't tell the difference outside him constantly bringing the subject up and almost falling two or three times an hour If not sitting.
So if the consciousness is there even though the ability to express it isn't, then perhaps we could recreate this ability and perhaps end some suffering from situations like that where people damage or destroy the ability to express their consciousness.
This could have applications outside of mortality. But I guess is brain dead really dead could be the question.
Chromosome malformation. Brain retardement. ,you lose consciousness
Brain Injury. (various, broca zone language impairment; visual blindness with intact eye ; memory problem; neuropathy ; alzheimer; personality changes with brain injury of special zones ; inability to recognize body as own)
The simple fact that once pulse go below 40 or blood to brain go too low
brain cancer
And I pass many others. Consciousness and brain are intimely linked. In fact there is ZEROevidence that we are anything else than a complex organic computer with multiple parallelism. Soul ? Afterlife ? ZERO evidence. Consciousness being the emerging process of the brain ? Plenty.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests). It gets co-opted and used in some hand-waving to try to explain away consciousness as an "emergent property" (and abstraction) of there being lots of neurons in the brain.
Unfortunately, it also entirely misses the point -- consciousness is not an abstraction, it is atomic (as you sit staring out of your eyes -- which by definition is the only way you have of knowing that you have a consciousness -- you experience only the consciousness and not the neurons).
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
Moreover the way we choose to define science (necessarily third party observational) makes this question inaccessible as it is necessarily first party observational. The philosophical question has always been "I am" not "my neurons fire in a particular way", nor even "you are" or "he is".
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use!
You are aware of what the "A" stands for in AI, aren't you?
On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Nope, we've found out since the '60s that things work remarkably differently than a computer, and AI is no longer slavishly attempting to replicate theories of human cognition in algorithmic form.
So your alternative is magic. See, that's where all the arguments for anything like that fail catastrophically. We don't understand it, so it must be magic. This is the strongest argument against a god: God say let there be light, and light was created. Ok. So, he just said it. As in, he spoke out loud: "Let there be light'. And something heard him, parsed his sentence, and executed the command in some way. What is that system that hard and executed this command? Wouldn't that be the real god? But then again, nobody's explaining how that thing actually executed the command. Did it also just wish for it to happen? That is circular logic, since it would also require something else to actually fulfill the wish.
Your argument has the same problems. If for a second we agree with you that no computer could do it. Then what? Magic? The implications are even more unbelievable, and create a whole new set of issues, so we must go back and say "There must be something we overloooked, let's keep trying".
Just because we haven't figured it out yet, doesn't give you carte blanche to invent all kinds of crazy, unsubstantiated guesses.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I guess you are missing the question. Even if you cut out part of the brain, are you removing part of the consciousness or the ability to express it. In other words, if someone steals your Cell Phone and you have no other way of getting a message out, does that mean the message disappears. And with that scenario, it could be that the message is just as important and will wait until you find another way of conveying it or it might not be longer relevant and not need conveyed at all.
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
Not necessarily. Obviously the religious fairy-tales are just that, i.e. whatever people need to hear to strengthen the meme-infection. But there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations. Consciousness and life itself are still not understood at all, so there is room for speculation. Obviously, the body (brain) plays a part (for many the dominant part, it seems), but it is not enough to explain what is observable. Still, no need to do "immortality" research, everybody finds out sooner or later what happens. I guess these 5M just show that quite a few rich people live pathetic lives and know it.
Here's an interesting concept... not quite sure if I accept it or not, but it's something which has had me thinking a bit recently.
Assuming the following things:
1) Existence (I hesitate to use the word "universe" given the various theories of multiple "universes") is infinite in either direction, time or both.
2) Randomness exists
3) Consciousness is caused by a specific arrangement of the make-up of our brains and could also be caused by similar specific arrangements of other things
Assumption 1 is very debatable; however certainly not outside the realms of reason. Assumption 2 is, in my understanding, pretty strongly confirmed - although there's still those who'd argue against it. Assumption 3 seems quite logical and reasonable in general.
Assumptions 1 and 2 lead to the idea that anything that can happen eventually will. Adding assumption 3 leads to the idea that after our consciousness stops in our brains (death), it will eventually spring up again somewhere else including all of the memories from our lives before.
It's also worth keeping in mind the idea that your consciousness is only aware of the present - the past is accessed through memories. Therefore it seems quite acceptable to say that there's no fundamental difference to waking up in the morning as a "different consciousness" today than the one you were yesterday whilst still retaining all the same memories versus actually remaining the same consciousness. You can't prove it one way or the other and it makes no difference whatsoever. Therefore this new consciousness that awakes a trillion trillion years from now that has all your memories IS just as much your consciousness as you are now.
Like I said, I'm not sure I accept this general idea or not (I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say I "believe" it); but it definitely is food for thought for me, and I would like to hear others' (reasoned) opinions on it.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
That's not an answer. And I think you know it as well as I do.
First, I'm quite familiar with computability and Godel's incompleteness theorems, and they have nothing at all to do with the question. There is absolutely nothing in them that implies AI is a fundamentally unsolvable problem. In fact, most AI researchers probably understand those subjects far better than you do - and they still consider AI to be a worthwhile problem to study.
Second, the current state of the art in AI is irrelevant. You didn't just say there were things computers can't currently do. You said there are things no computer can ever do, no matter how powerful. That claim needs to be justified.
Third, AI has actually been making dramatic progress in recent years. After decades of following paths that didn't lead anywhere, researchers have finally found some techniques that enabled major breakthroughs. If you want to see practical applications of that, just look at Watson or Siri or the like. A mere five years ago, both of those would have been science fiction. Today they're real.
Ironically, the recent advances in "AI" were largely through stopping thinking about AI as building an artificial version of human cognition, and instead doing something with far fewer philosophical claims: statistically mining the heck out of big data.
What hostility, what unasked question? I've been pondering this stuff since I'm a teenager, I'm just not easy to surprise.
As I said, everything is everything... the "problem" with that is, it doesn't make much sense to speak of individuality then, either.
My point was, even though everything that can be learned about neurology seems to utterly destroy most notions we have about ourselves and our decisions, we still have them. We go further and further away from just being, and coming up with objecties and properties to "possess", and "narratives" and all that nonsense. So yeah, let's ponder our mortality. I have great trust we won't fatfinger it. We already applied our rational brain to economics and politics, let's do this now.
From the summary:
"including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior."
Notice what they have in common? Both are about living people. The latter is actually a joke. Why not include "the history of folkore about immortality?" That's also "studying an aspect of immortality". I'm not opposed to questions, I'm opposed to shallowness :P
from the article:
"If you believe in reincarnation, how can the very same person exist if you start over with no memories?"
You see, even comedians are more insightful than that.
"I suppose it would be nice if reincarnation were a reality, but I have problems with the math. At some point, originally, there must have been a time when there were only two human beings. They both died, and presumably their souls were reincarnated into two other bodies. But that still leaves us with only two souls. We now have nearly six billion people on the planet. Where are all the extra souls coming from? Is someone printing up souls? Wouldn't that tend to lower their value?" - George Carlin
There. Done. Tomorrow we'll talk about Noah's Ark.
Everything is everything, and there is no hostility in that. The notions we have, what we call humans and how we consider ourselves - that won't disappear, because it never existed in the first place. A needle isn't hostile to a bubble, the tension in the bubble is hostile to reality.
<face-palm> Sorry, no. Just no. I don't care if you're an MD; words have meaning. If a person's heart stops and you revive him by cardio resuscitation, you are not reanimating a dead person. You are stopping a person from dying. I'll lay heavy odds that you would do the right thing if the patient's heart and breathing stop and the patient loses consciousness, because I have high regard and respect for anyone who has successfully passed through the grueling process of becoming a medical doctor. But I would argue that proper use of terms is particularly important in the field.
Wikipedia: "Death is the cessation or permanent termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism." Cessation; not interruption.
Merriam-Webster.com: "a permanent cessation of all vital functions: the end of life."
Dictionary.com: "the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism."
MedicalDictionary.theFreeDictionary.com: "Death is defined as the cessation of all vital functions of the body including the heartbeat, brain activity (including the brain stem), and breathing." Cessation, not interruption.
Euthanasia.procon.org: "the cessation of life; permanent cessation of all vital bodily functions. For legal and medical purposes, the following definition of death has been proposed-the irreversible cessation of all of the following: (1) total cerebral function, usually assessed by EEG as flat-line (2) spontaneous function of the respiratory system, and (3) spontaneous function of the circulatory system..." There are those pesky words again, permanent and irreversible.
The Definition of Death (Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy: "According to the organismic definition, death is the irreversible loss of functioning of the organism as a whole (Becker 1975; Bernat, Culver, and Gert 1981)." ... "According to the mainstream whole-brain approach, the human brain plays the crucial role of integrating major bodily functions so only the death of the entire brain is necessary and sufficient for a human being's death (Bernat, Culver, and Gert 1981)." ... "According to the higher-brain standard, human death is the irreversible cessation of the capacity for consciousness...Although no jurisdiction has adopted the higher-brain standard, it enjoys the support of many scholars (see, e.g., Veatch 1975; Engelhardt 1975; Green and Wikler 1980; Gervais 1986; Bartlett and Youngner 1988; Puccetti 1988; Rich 1997; and Baker 2000)." Each of those three definitions shares the necessary component of "irreversible".
The closest I've ever come to a near death experience however was that time when a really big burly biker unfolded himself from a small pink smartcar carrying a small dog in a pink coat.
I remember vividly seeing a burly individual having the looks of a stereotypical biker scolding his dog in public. The dog in question was a chihuahua or some similar breed and it was constantly barking. "Apo! Be quiet, Apo!" It turned out that the biker's chihuahua answered to the name of Apocalypse.
Ezekiel 23:20
The followers of Jesus did indeed believe that Jesus rose from the dead, because they saw him with their very own eyes. All of them, except for John, died a horrible death for this belief. People do not go to their death for proclaiming something they know to be an out right lie. If Jesus had not resurrected from the dead, there would be no Christianity today.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
We haven't seen consciousness with only a brain, for example.
Nor have we seen circulation with only a heart, breathing with only a pair of lungs, or insulin production with only a pancreas. So what? All organs operate within the body, and are mutually dependent on each other's correct function. This doesn't imply anything mystical.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there. A good first assumption, but not more than an assumption. The currents state of scientific research is that it is completely unknown what consciousness is and what intelligence is. Both can be described by their effects, but to speculate on where they reside and whether they are generated there is very much premature at this time.
To have scientific research of consciousness, you first need to define what it actually means - a strict and clear definition. We don't have one. So everyone is really talking about their own thing.
Death is the cessation or permanent termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism." Cessation; not interruption.
This is an exceptionally silly definition, because how exactly do you determine permanency?
To give a simple example with GP. Suppose the people around him decided to not reanimate him. What, precisely, would be the moment of his death? Is it when he lost consciousness (since that's where "termination of biological functions" began, and it was "permanent" since he didn't get reanimated)? Or the moment when they decided to do nothing? Or the moment when they could have still done anything with non-zero chance of success, regardless of whether they did or not? What if that happened when defibrillators didn't exist, did death occur earlier back then?
I'm glad your imagination is working. I'm also glad you reached the mental wherewithal to post something about it instead of sitting in your mom's basement all day playing extreme candyland- the shoots and ladders edition.
Let me explain something, this is a lot like memory for the computer. You know, that thing that allows you to surf porn and post remarks to show the world your lack of intelligence. If the power fails, the reason your Asian babes with porcupines page disappears and needs reloaded when the computer restarts is because it is part of a memory that needs a constant voltage to maintain it's condition. Much like a fully functioning brain, we can measure that voltage and even monitor activity. Now there is another type of memory, this type of memory hard codes the information until it is manipulated again which is why you computer can restart and load the operating system in the first place. In both scenarios, when the power is gone, you get the appearance of nothing and when the power is on, you get activity that can be measured. However, even if the information is still there, it cannot be perceived as being there.
So is the consciousness random access memory that disappears with a power failure, or one that remains except that you know it because the monitor was damaged in the power outage? Should I automatically assume the computer is dead and throw it away, or should I look at it to see if there is another way to access the information- perhaps with a new monitor.
Now go back to thinking about your animal feces and what that means to you and let the adults talk for a bit.
I guess you didn't read my reply very carefully or understand it. Lots of people willing to die for what they believe. What nobody is willing to die for is something they KNOW to be a falsehood. The disciples of Jesus had seen him in his resurrected glory. The apostle Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians 15 that the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to 500 people at once.
People continually repeat the refrain, “the Bible cannot be trusted to be historically accurate”. There are people today that deny the historicity of the Holocaust. There are people today that refuse to believe that any human being ever walked on the moon. Anyone who does not WANT to believe something they are told, will not believe, no matter how much evidence they are presented with.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.