About the immortality of our consciousness

[Brother]

Quantum consciousness and life after death: is our identity really in memories and can it be copied and resurrected?

Historian, popularizer of science and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer goes through the hypotheses of the immortality of consciousness and explains why, even if we assume that these hypotheses are correct, after death you will be someone else, but not yourself , and copying memories is far from copying the personality and its values.

In the Netflix movie Discovery (2017), Robert Redford plays the scientist who proves that the afterlife is real.

“As soon as the body dies, part of our consciousness leaves us and goes to another level,” he explains.

This is confirmed by his machine, which, according to another character in the film, measures 2 "brain wavelengths at the subatomic level after his death."

This idea is not too far from a real theory called quantum consciousness, proposed by a wide range of people, from the physicist Roger Penrose to the physician Deepak Chopra. Some of her interpretations say that our mind is not exclusively a product of our brain, and that consciousness exists separately from matter, therefore the death of your physical body is not the end of the existence of your consciousness. Since this is the topic of my next book, Heaven on Earth: The Scientific Search for Afterlife, Immortality and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018), I noticed that the film touched on a number of issues that I associated with the concepts mentioned, scientific and religious.

First , it is believed that our identity resides in our memories, which are supposed to remain forever in the brain: if they could be copied and pasted into a computer, or duplicated and implanted into a resurrected body or soul, we could be reborn. But our memory doesn't work that way.

Memory is not like a DVR (video recorder) that can replay the past on a screen in your brain. Memory is an ever-changing and ongoing process that depends entirely on the functioning of the neurons in your brain. When you wake up in the morning after sleep or come out of anesthesia after anesthesia, your memories come back in the same way as after so-called profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest. During this process, the patient's brain is cooled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes electrical activity in the neurons to stop, indicating that long-term memories are stored statically. But if your brain is dead, then this will not happen. This is why cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should be done immediately after a heart attack or drowning: if the brain is experiencing oxygen deprivation,

Secondly , there is the assumption that copying your brain's connectome (diagrams of its neural connections), loading it into a computer (as some scientists claim) or resurrecting your physical self in the afterlife (described in many religions) will lead to awakening, as as if from a long dream - it doesn't matter, in the laboratory or in heaven. But the copy of your memories, your mind, or even your soul, is not you. This is a copy of you, your twin, but no twin, looking at his brother or sister, thinks, "This is me." Neither duplication nor resurrection can embody you on another plane of existence.

Thirdly your unique personality is more than just your intact memories; it is also your outlook on life. Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth, a senior fellow at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and president of the Brain Preservation Foundation, divides identity into its constituent elements: I-memory and I-views. He believes that if we completely transfer “I-memory” (or, say, into a resurrected body in heaven) into a computer, then “I-views” will awaken on their own. I disagree with that. If this were done without human death, there would be two “I-memories”, each with its own “I-views”, which would look at the world with their unique eyes. At this point, each of them will adhere to their own life path, creating different memories based on different experiences. “YOU” could not have two categories of “self-views”. If you die there is no mechanism by which part of the self-gaze identity will be transferred from your brain to the computer (or to the resurrected body). Self-views are entirely dependent on a person's own continuity from moment to moment, even if this duration is briefly interrupted by sleep or anesthesia. Death is a permanent break in continuity, and personal "I-views" cannot be moved from your brain to any other environment, here or in the future.

If this sounds unspiritual to you, then it is not. The realization of our mortality leads to spiritual uplift, because it means that every moment, every day and every relationship matters. Interaction with the world and with other living beings brings meaning and purpose. We, each of us, is unique in the world and in history, geographically and chronologically. Our genomes and connectomes cannot be duplicated, which is why we are humans, endowed with an awareness of our mortality and an understanding of what that means. And what does that mean? Life is not some kind of temporary staging before a big show in the future - it's our personal proscenium in the cosmic drama here and now.