Very difficult paradox?

Question

What would happen if someone perfectly reconstructed the brain of someone who had died? Would that person come back to life or not, and why? Could there be an easier way to answer this question instead of actually having to build a brain? Also, what if every neuron and every connection between neurons was replicated exactly except for just one of the connections of one neuron? Would that be sufficient to create a completely different person? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Your brain is pretty fragile and begins to decay very soon after death. What is important--what determines a person's personality, skills and memories--are encoded in the various connections neurons have with each other, including the precise spacing between neurons. And unfortunately, these connections are the first thing to be lost on death. Neurons shrivel up, breaking the connections & messing up the spacing (potentialities) between them.

If you can revive a person a few seconds after death, they probably won't suffer any long term damage. But after more than a few minutes, they would probably suffer at least some brain damage, and after 10 or 15 minutes the brain probably couldn't be revived. The exception to this would be if the brain underwent significant cooling prior to or immediately after death, for instance if a person drowns in an icy lake or undergoes cryonic suspension. Cold can greatly slow down the rate of brain decay, buying valuable time.

Now, let's say that you take a REALLY detailed image of a person's brain prior to their death. (It would have to be detailed enough to show the layout and structure of neurons, and to show the amount of spacing between them.) It may then be possible, at least in theory, to use nanotechnology to reconstruct a hardware or software version of that person's brain. You couldn't recreate a "meat" version, because it would be dead anyway, and the first parts of it you recreated would already be decaying by the time you finished building it. (For all its sci-fi glamor, nanotech ain't _that_ fast & powerful.) But if you could create a computerized version, then that should--again, in theory--be indistinguishable from the person who was scanned, at the time it was done. The recreation would have all the same memories, skills, personality, etc. as the original.

This process is known as "mind uploading" and has been featured in some sci-fi stories for some years now. There are actually scientists paving the way for this to become a reality one day, but don't expect it to happen anytime in the next few decades. The good news is, there may be ways using nanotechnology to upload a person's mind without them having to die--in fact they could be conscious during the procedure. This would involve injecting a lot of nanorobots into a person which would then take up residence in each of his neurons. The nanorobots would analyze the neuron, examine how it behaves & how it's connected, then replace it with a hardware simulation. Eventually a person's brain would be transformed from "meat" to neural-net computer, and it could be argued that this would still be the same person (as opposed to a copy) because that person will have had a continuous stream of consciousness.

And once you've uploaded your brain to a more durable (and much faster) medium, you don't have to worry about pesky things like aging, Alzheimers, and many other forms of death. You could still be murdered or die in an accident, but aside from that you could be effectively immortal.

All WE have to do is to make sure to live long enough for this to come about. :-)

WRT your question about a single neuron being off, it wouldn't make any noticeable difference. Our brains are actually changing all the time; every new memory that gets laid down is a change in our brains. We are constantly creating new memories and forgetting old ones; you are not the exact same person you were yesterday, or even a minute ago. We also lose (IIRC) hundreds of neurons every day from aging, disease, drinking alcohol, smoking, or a hundred other causes. Don't worry though, we've got about 100 billion of them, so a few thousand gone AWOL won't do you too much harm.

For more on brain uploading, see links below.

Answer 2

that person would not come back because the brain is not the only organ that needs to fuction in order to be alive, and for the other question, it wouldnt make a difference if 1 connection was not replicated or not connected at all, during our life we kill and mess with some of our neurones and we dont change to a different personality just because of that, we people smoke they are killing neurons, when people get a brain aneurism neurones get killed, and so on.

Answer 3

Considering a new research in holographic structures of a universe and everything within... let assume that brain does not produce a consciousness, which presumably was represented that person who departures, rather Consciousness operates through that which you are willing to reconstruct...Receiver ...Theoretically we may replicate wet thing which may looks and may be smell like a human brain , but will consciousness occupy our crafting? Tiny neuron has its own structure with infinity depth as anything else in our Universe Can we replicate Infinity? But making tremendous effort to do that through centuries...for reason to understand something significantly different and simple...well it is not happened yet...

Answer 4

The light bulb without the electricity no matter how many different connections you have would still not glow, therefor a brain without a spirit would not be completely alive. Even if you were to get it functioning it would not be complete. Peace and love be with you.

Answer 5

We are created by God and have a soul.

Answer 6

you can have my brain ,I'm not using it..