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pdf23ds comments on MWI, weird quantum experiments and future-directed continuity of conscious experience - Less Wrong
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Comments (89)
Sorry, I wish I had followed this earlier.
No, death can easily be explained in a reductionist way without positing ontologically-basic subjectivity.
Death simply refers to when a self-perpetuating process (usually labeled "life") stops maintaining itself far from equilibrium with its environment via expenditure of negentropy (free energy). Note that a common term for dying (in English) is "reaching room temperature". (Yes, yes, cold-blooded life forms are always staying close to room temperature, but they stay far from equilibrium in other ways -- chemically, structurally, etc..)
Being frozen in such a way that the process that is you can be recovered is not death, at least not completely. You are still far from equilibrium with your broader environment -- note that you still have a large KL divergence, so the information contained in you has not been irreversibly deleted.
Never heard that one. Is that an American idiom? "Passing away" seems to be the standard euphemism where I'm from, but I usually just say "dying".
For reference, I've never encountered that either, and I'm an American and a student of British English.
Well, it's a dysphemism rather than a euphemism, but forms of it are used, and it doesn't appear to be unique to America. Check this Googling and its alternate suggestion and you see a New Zealand blog mentioning that some "oxygen waster" has finally "reached room temperature".
A very insightful idiom indeed!