[extropy-chat] 'Resurrection' and nanotech

[Robert Bradbury]

This is a comment on a recent post by Terry Colvin regarding a
conversation between "Scott D. White" and "Dave Palmer" on the topic of
resurrection.

I'm going to confine myself to the information theoretic aspects of
this.  There are two components of what we consider to be "beings"
(where you can stretch this from human "beings" to dolphin beings,
parrot beings, baby beings, etc. depending upon how you want to stretch
the definition).  The first component is a genetic background which
determines the physical substrate upon which the being operates as well
as a number of programs that involve built-in instincts that have proven
to be successful for survival over evolutionary time scales.  The second
component is "software" which is generally configured by experience that
involves learned successful survival strategies.

Now, it is very hard to completely destroy the genetic component.  It
requires very large doses of radiation or heat (e.g. cremation) or the
complete consumption of the genetic material by bacteria.  Under some
circumstances, such as dessication, DNA can survive hundreds, perhaps
even thousands of years sufficiently
well that a complete genome could be reconstructed.  You should keep in
mind that most large genomes now
are reconstructed from millions of small overlapping fragments.
Provided a sufficient number of such overlapping
fragments remains in a corpse, tissue fragment, bone marrow, etc. it is
possible to reconstruct the original genome sequence.

Now, with respect to the "experiential" part of an identity, this is
essentially locked up in the interconnection
network between the neurons in the brain (and perhaps in some of the
underlying biological machinery
that enables communication between specific neurons).  I have argued
previously (perhaps years ago) that
so long as one can preserve a reasonably accurate record of this 3-D
neural network you can preserve
the identity of an individual (this is the idea behind cryonics).  I
have also argued that this preservation
need not be perfect -- the complexity of the 3-D network in the brain is
so high and the foot-prints
left by various synaptic connections is sufficient that one ought to be
able to take a frozen brain
drop it on the floor of the room breaking it into thousands or millions
of pieces and still be able to
determine the linkages that were present in its original (whole) form.
In that case the information
can be recovered.  However, if the brain of an individual who has "died"
remains at body/room
temperature for an extended period of time it is highly likely that some
of the information content
will start being recycled by normal biological processes.  Unless
extreme chemical or physical steps
are taken to prevent normal biological processes the information content
will begin to degrade.
But the standards for judging someone as being "dead" were so primitive
2000 years ago were
so primitive I don't see how anyone can believe them for longer than 5
seconds.

Now, with respect to Jesus and the resurrection -- there is no doubt in
my mind that if Jesus were
nano-enabled (using a combination of some of the technologies suggested
by Freitas & Phoenix with
their vasculoid organ perhaps combined with a bunch of respirocytes --
with enough creative engineering
to allow Jesus to "bleed") there is no doubt in my mind that the
*entire* event (if it even took place)
was nothing more than an elaborate stage show.  No miracles involved, no
"son of god", etc. etc. etc.

Terry -- feel free to forward this back to those from whence the
discussion came.

Robert