Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "信息理论性死亡" in Chinese language version.
We will soon need to scrap the brain death standard in favor of a much more tentative, probabilistic, information-theoretic understanding of death as the loss of identity-critical information.
Merkle's definition of death is of more philosophical than practical importance. To apply it, we need to know exactly how memories, personality, and other aspects of personal identity are stored in the brain.
Any meaningful definition of death is then suggested by an information-theoretic criterion. In other words, does that patient contain enough undamaged structure (information) to infer his healthy working state from his current non-functional one?
In the later case, sometimes called “absolutely irreversible death” or “information theoretic death” destruction of the brain has occurred to such an extreme that any information it may have ever held is irrevocably lost for all eternity.
This approach to defining death, which is rooted not in relative, changing technology and vitalistic worldviews, but rather in the fundamentals of physical law, is known as the information theoretic criterion of death.
Cryptographer and nanotechnologist Ralph Merkle noted, “The difference between information theoretic death and clinical death is as great as the difference between turning off a computer and dissolving that computer in acid.
One possible answer is a definition of death that is independent of technology, no matter how advanced. Such a definition is the Information Theoretic Criterion for Death.
This is known as the information-theoretic definition of death and appears to be the ultimate definition of irreversible death.
The theory of information-theoretical death was introduced, stating that the human brain cell arrangement at one point in time loses its stored information and experiences brain death (translate.reference.com)
(Ralph Merkle) has used this idea to popularize a fourth definition of death: "information-theoretic" death, the point at which the brain has succumbed to the pull of entropy and the mind can no longer be reconstituted. Only then, he says, are you really and truly dead.
This approach to defining death, which is rooted not in relative, changing technology and vitalistic worldviews, but rather in the fundamentals of physical law, is known as the information theoretic criterion of death.
Cryptographer and nanotechnologist Ralph Merkle noted, “The difference between information theoretic death and clinical death is as great as the difference between turning off a computer and dissolving that computer in acid.
One possible answer is a definition of death that is independent of technology, no matter how advanced. Such a definition is the Information Theoretic Criterion for Death.
This is known as the information-theoretic definition of death and appears to be the ultimate definition of irreversible death.
The theory of information-theoretical death was introduced, stating that the human brain cell arrangement at one point in time loses its stored information and experiences brain death (translate.reference.com)
Any meaningful definition of death is then suggested by an information-theoretic criterion. In other words, does that patient contain enough undamaged structure (information) to infer his healthy working state from his current non-functional one?
(Ralph Merkle) has used this idea to popularize a fourth definition of death: "information-theoretic" death, the point at which the brain has succumbed to the pull of entropy and the mind can no longer be reconstituted. Only then, he says, are you really and truly dead.