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Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival

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55 points arielzj | 2 comments | 08 Dec 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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polishdude20 ◴[08 Dec 25 22:46 UTC] No.46198703[source]▶
I thought about death the other day and how maybe it's akin to the feeling of going under before a surgery.

When you go under and then wake up some hours later, often you feel like no time has passed at all.

What if death is just that same feeling or lack thereof for Millenia, an infinite amount of time, but at some point from your perspective, you wake up instantly far in the future.

Like a photon travelling for millions of years, you don't perceive time passing at all.

Given an infinite amount of time, there will be a time where all of your atoms will recombine again in just the right away to bring you back to consciousness with all your memories in tact.

To you, it feels like you woke up in an instant. To the universe, it took an infinite amount of time to wake up you again.

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1. kylehotchkiss ◴[08 Dec 25 22:52 UTC] No.46198776[source]▶
> Given an infinite amount of time, there will be a time where all of your atoms will recombine again in just the right away to bring you back to consciousness with all your memories in tact.

n00b question, but if consciousness is a quantum effect[1], would mere atomic recombination really be enough to bring you back? Also, isn't entropy ripping the universe apart into a big glass cloud with energy equally distributed?

[1] I once asked somebody with a doctorate in neuroscience/biology about this and promptly received an eyeroll, so I'm playing theoretical here

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2. Terr_ ◴[08 Dec 25 22:55 UTC] No.46198810[source]▶
> if consciousness is a quantum effect [...] promptly received an eyeroll

A very long comic, but the punchline is relevant: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3

> would mere atomic recombination really be enough to bring you back?

I think we need to distinguish between "quantum effect" versus "quantum state". There are probably a lot of biological processes that are possible or efficient from quantum effects (vision, smell, photosynthesis) but that doesn't mean the machinery itself has a fragility beyond the arrangement of its atoms.

I imagine our brains/minds go through far greater levels of disruption in our daily lives, sleep-cycles, anesthesia, concussions, etc.