Death

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-05-20 11:48am

To you, when exactly is a person dead?

What all the options actually mean:

Legal Death - What ever your state defines death as, could vary from when their heart stops beating to complete brain failure
Clinical Death - Exact meaning varies on which country your in, but seems to alternate between some type of brain death and a non-beating heart
Brain death (everything but the spine stem, ie complete vegtiable) - The upper brain has zero electrical activity. A human vegtiable(ie no one at home, at all. Even the lights are out, and a For Sale sign can be seen)
Brain death (spine stem) - The spine stem part of the brain has failed(ie no electrical activity in the lower brain), meaning all autonomic functions are completely dead.
Brain death (complete failure) - The brain is a messy paper wieght. Zero electrical activity in the brain. No one at home, lights are out, and the house isnt standing anymore.

:edit: Also explain your choice. And if you choice Legal or Clinical, give which version your talking about.

:edit2: ARRR, stupid edit killed the poll!

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-05-20 11:58am

When your brain stops working you`re dead......................"Its full of dead people in politics"

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-05-20 12:22pm

"irreversible cessation of brain activity."

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2003-05-20 12:55pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:"irreversible cessation of brain activity."

Can't be that Chick and the gang ain't buried.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-05-20 12:58pm

We're quickly reaching the point where cybernetics will reach a breaking point and we'll be able to be connected directly to computers. When we get to this point some part in the consciousness may be saved.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-05-20 01:27pm

SyntaxVorlon wrote:We're quickly reaching the point where cybernetics will reach a breaking point and we'll be able to be connected directly to computers. When we get to this point some part in the consciousness may be saved.

Ah No.

We are noware near close.

As a friend from uni (doing Computer Science) said to me:
"Compared to medicine, we are the stage in Cybernetics that we still havent figured out that if we give them some and they die, not to give them that something."

And this is very very true.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2003-05-20 01:28pm

ARRR stupid edit killed the poll.

:edit:

Stupid poll.

Can some mod fix this mess (the duplicate poll enteries)

It's impossible. Board glitch. It sucks to be you

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2003-05-20 02:58pm

Brain dead. Can't recover from that.

Queeb Salaron · Post by **Queeb Salaron** » 2003-05-20 03:04pm

Complete brain failure. A) You can't recover from it, and B) that's when organ harvest becomes legal without donor consent.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-05-20 03:14pm

SyntaxVorlon wrote:We're quickly reaching the point where cybernetics will reach a breaking point and we'll be able to be connected directly to computers. When we get to this point some part in the consciousness may be saved.

No, you've gone way off there. We can connect humans to machines, and with brain signals you can say, move a cross around on a screen.

This however is nowhere near to recording consciousness, as the neurones have to rewisre to use the new "appendage" which has presigned controls. We not overly sure how consciousness works and a recording system for it is far off.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2003-05-20 03:29pm

Queeb Salaron wrote:Complete brain failure. A) You can't recover from it, and B) that's when organ harvest becomes legal without donor consent.

Don't you still have to be an organ donor (have one of those cards)?

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-05-20 03:47pm

ggs wrote:To you, when exactly is a person dead?

What all the options actually mean:

Legal Death - What ever your state defines death as, could vary from when their heart stops beating to complete brain failure

Clinical Death - Exact meaning varies on which country your in, but seems to alternate between some type of brain death and a non-beating heart

Brain death (everything but the spine stem, ie complete vegtiable) - The upper brain has zero electrical activity. A human vegtiable(ie no one at home, at all. Even the lights are out, and a For Sale sign can be seen)

Brain death (spine stem) - The spine stem part of the brain has failed(ie no electrical activity in the lower brain), meaning all autonomic functions are completely dead.

Brain death (complete failure) - The brain is a messy paper wieght. Zero electrical activity in the brain. No one at home, lights are out, and the house isnt standing anymore.
:edit: Also explain your choice. And if you choice Legal or Clinical, give which version your talking about.

:edit2: ARRR, stupid edit killed the poll!

It all becomes academic after the brain ceases electrical activity. Once that happens, everything that the person was is gone . . . poof . . . off into the maisma. Break out the booze and hold a wake, he's dead, Jim.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-05-20 04:03pm

SyntaxVorlon wrote:We're quickly reaching the point where cybernetics will reach a breaking point and we'll be able to be connected directly to computers. When we get to this point some part in the consciousness may be saved.

No, we're nowhere near that point. And we're not likely to get to that point at any time in our lives (when I say 'our' I mean anybody currently on this board, and very likely their children and grandchildren.)

To capture a snapshot of consciousness, you need to be able to map every last connection in the cortex. That's a hundred billion neurons times 20,000 connections per neuron. You would also have to chart the voltage potential required to get each neuron to fire down a given pathway, as it is not just the connections, but the way the connections are used. You also have to measure the timing of the electrical impulses based upon what stimulation is being applied to the system. Even if we assumed there were perhaps a hundred different potential levels and a hundred impulse combinations, that still means we'd have to capture at least 2E+19 pieces of information. If we could represent each piece of information as a 32-bit word (and you might need even more precision than that), that works out to be about eighty billion gigabytes of information per person.

And that's saying nothing about the resolution required to capture this information, or the highly intrusive procedures that would be required to capture it. Capturing a person's conscience to a computer would probably involve destroying the brain it rides in. Not to mention a computer with the storage space and processing capacity necessary to emulate the captured human mind. And it's very likely to be a process that would never be used in an emergency situation.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-05-20 08:12pm

If the spine stem goes, wouldn't that mean that your heart would stop?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-05-20 08:35pm

Any interuption of mental processes disrupts your conciousness and you cease to be you. But thats just discontinuity of your consciousness.

Death is the irreversible cessation of cellular functioning.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-05-20 08:40pm

Death is when all brain activity ceases.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-05-20 08:54pm

Death is when your heart stops, and then all benifits cease.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-05-20 09:09pm

That's not quite true. Even after the heart stops, there'll be enough momentum in the blood to keep you going for a minute or two.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-05-20 09:13pm

You are only truely dead if the cessation of brain activity is irreversible. There have been cases in which people who have drowned in extremely cold water have shown the condidtions you people have described, such as no pulse or brain activity, yet were still able to be revived.

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-05-20 09:37pm

It is when all mental activity stops for an indefinite period.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-05-21 04:59pm

Darth Yoshi wrote:If the spine stem goes, wouldn't that mean that your heart would stop?

Yes.

Which is what killed my dad when the stroke hit him there.

Machines kept him alive for 10 days as we got two doctors opinions on if he'd ever come back as anything but a veggie. Then the Living Will kicked in, and he was gone within 5 minutes after the machines were disconnected.

Queeb Salaron · Post by **Queeb Salaron** » 2003-05-21 07:01pm

Sir Sirius wrote:Don't you still have to be an organ donor (have one of those cards)?

Not if you can get consent from the next-of-kin. Unless the person has a specific will to not have their organs donated, the executor of their will has to decide for them.

If you're looking for good reading on organ doners, read Tess Gerritson's Harvest. Great fucking book. Medical thriller. Fantasmagoric.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Death

Death, exactly what do you define it as?

Death

Re: Death