Michael Jackson’s Brain Rots, Never to Be Preserved Monday, Jun 29 2009
cryonics 4:10 pm
Apparently Michael Jackson was interested in cryonics, but never signed up.
This is sort of sad, because the structure of the brain holds one’s personality and a lifetime of memories. Even if you don’t believe in the potential of future revival, preserving the structure of the brain would still be incredibly interesting, because future analysis could allow us to read memories and other cognitive features. Already, neuroscientists can read basic thoughts via brain scanning.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
I find loathsome the idea that someone in the future could rummage through a dead brain and extract the innermost thoughts and intimate memories of the deceased. Although it might well be “incredibly interesting” I question the morality of such a thing.
It would be the ultimate expression of today’s culture of celebrity worship. We already feel we have the right to know every aspect of our idol’s lives, so we might as well suck their brain dry too.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Well, I was sort of assuming he’d give permission.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:32 pm
don’t you find it within the realm of possibility for us to replicate all past events to ever occur in the universe? as in, reproduce all the variables which led to person X coming into existence as they were, which would probably result in a replica of the previously deceased person X?
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:46 am
That’s an interesting hypothetical - “Would you be willing to allow your thoughts and memories to be extracted and analyzed after your death?”
I’m sure there are those who would say “I’m dead. What do I care?” while others would be concerned about their legacy, and others about how such information could hurt their loved ones. Overall I’d bet very few people would grant permission.
As for the possibility of replicating a person by simulating the events which led to that person, I don’t think it is even theoretically possible, since it would require perfect knowledge of the past.
Assume we had a database that had the current state of everything in the universe at some random point in time (X). Let the universe run for awhile (Y). Now, take your snapshot of the universe and run that as a simulation for time Y, then take another snapshot. Both the database and universe had matching data at time X. Do they still match at time Y? No, because random quantum fluctuations and chaos will lead to different and unpredictible outcomes. The universe is not clockwork.
However, there may be places where Michael Jackson is still alive and moonwalking, since any of several varieties of parallel universes very likely exist.