Final death

Final death ( information-theoretical death ) is a theoretical concept that seeks to describe objectively the borderline state of destruction of the human brain (or any other cognitive structure capable of embodying a personality ), after passing which there is no theoretical possibility to restore the original personality by any physical means. In practice, this means that entropy must be turned to restore the personality to the last state while the brain is working (the impossibility of this is generally known as the asymmetry of the passage of time ). The concept of final death arose in the 90s of the 20th century as a response to questions posed by the progress of medicine and the analysis of conditions - such as, for example, cardiac arrest , previously regarded as death , but reversible with the help of new medical technologies.

“Final death” means death, irreversible by any technology. Unlike clinical death and brain death , which define the limits of providing context-sensitive medical care, final death determines the true theoretical limits of survival. In particular, the prospect of using molecular nanotechnology to restore the brain would presumably make it possible for the patient to be resurrected several hours after cardiac arrest.

In the work Molecular Brain Repair (Molecular Repair of the Brain) ^[1] Ralph Merkle defines information-theoretical death as follows:

A person is dead according to the theoretical information criterion, if his memories, personality, hopes, dreams, etc., were destroyed in the information-theoretical sense. This means that if the structures of the brain that encode memory and personality were so destroyed that their restoration to their inherent working condition is no longer possible in principle, then a person is dead. If the structures encoding memory and personality are so intact that the extraction of memory and personality is possible in principle and, thus, it is also possible in principle to restore them to their proper working condition, in this case the person is not dead.

The way to accurately determine the moment of final death (information-theoretical death) is unknown today. It is assumed to occur at room temperature a few hours after clinical death, as the brain undergoes autolysis . It can also occur in the absence of blood flow in the brain with artificial life support, leading to a decomposition stage in brain dying, or during the development of brain degeneration, which is caused by extensive loss of brain structures.

The term “final death” also appears in the context of cryonics , where the preservation of the brain or the entire body of a person at low temperatures can be viewed as an attempt to prevent it. The use of the criterion of final death forms the basis of ethical arguments that claim that cryonics is an attempt to save lives, and not a way of burial for the dead. On the contrary, if the cryonics method was applied after the onset of final death, or the cryopreservation procedure itself, as such, caused the onset of final death, the goals of cryonics are not achievable.