"Death represents the loss of knowledge and information. A person is a mind file. A person is a software program--a very profound one, and we have no backup." --Ray Kurzweil
spoken like a true scientist, yet some people survive death. the energy in a person transcends in some cases. maybe a primitive thought, yet look at children which inherit thoughts and feelings
To paraphrase a line from the old Homicide show, Death doesn't "represent" anything, only survivors can continue to try to make something out of it. And, Kurzweil's own words refute what they assert--after he is dead, they will live on (presumably) as his "backup". EESenor
I'll agree with the sentiment, but the oversimplification is enough to piss one off. It's not knowledge and information, it's associations, capabilities, tendencies, etc. If it WERE just information, it COULD be backed up. But if you destroy all the life's work of a great artist/scientist/whatever, they're still a great whatever because they're capable of making more. What makes someone a good doctor isn't their encyclopedic knowledge of their field of medicine, it's their ability to work up a case. Otherwise you'd be seeing doctor google. And if someone you love has retroactive amnesia, they do not become a completely different person.
But yeah, it totally sucks when people die. Totally.
Duh, Mai, no one's suggesting otherwise. It's just that in the case of the death of a compulsive liar, who literally told *no one* the whole truth, the death of knowledge and memory becomes just as important as the death of associations, capabilities and tendencies, b/c now no one will know the truth...
Kurzweil is wrong when he asserts that a person is a "software program". Like computers, one is 'hardware' as well. The real mystery here lies in what is unknowable to all of us: the conscious perspective of another, just as the real cosmic mystery is not Death, but Life. EESenor
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But yeah, it totally sucks when people die. Totally.
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