Life After Death?

Representations of the Mind as a Way to Cheat Death

In some ways, writing is like trying to capture, preserve, and spread a large part of yourself. To externalize a state of consciousness, one that you are then able to pass on to another person. If you, in some format, had a state of consciousness — a story, a play, a movie, a song — then you in some part were that state of consciousness. An author is their book. And if you are able to transmit that part of you, then that part of you survives.

However, even the most detailed novel is not a very good stand-in for the human experience. Douglas Hofstadter, in his novel I am a Strange Loop, includes a chapter exploring a wonderful concept: how his dead wife lives on inside of his head. To Hofstadter, human consciousness is more a pattern of information than anything else. In an abstract mathematical sense, conscious is literally just a pattern of information. And it is a predictable pattern if you have enough data. This input will produce this output. If I say this, you will respond with that. If you know someone well enough, you in some way understand their pattern.

From decades of interaction, conversation, and shared experience with his wife, Hofstadter believes that a part of his mind has a detailed and rich representation of his wife’s pattern. He can basically have a conversation with her in his head, or know how she would react to one of his dumb jokes. It is not a perfect representation, but it is a rich and incredible one nonetheless.

In a way, some parts of her pattern live on inside of him. They have become a part of his pattern. This is another way of saying that some parts of her live on.

In that way, a relationship is a better way of passing yourself on than writing a novel. A relationship forms a more comprehensive representation of each member. That representation has less reach than writing, but more detail. Less chance of lasting for centuries, but a fuller picture now.

I have long wondered why human connection feels meaningful, and have tried to justify it psychologically. I wonder if this is part of the answer. Every interaction we have with another is building up their representation of ourselves. In our deep, psychological drive to survive, to avoid death, we seek immortality through spreading representations of ourselves. We spread our Self via interaction. We seek to live on in the minds of others.

This is reminiscent of the theme in the movie Coco: you are not truly dead until the last living memory of you fades. That is a far more poetic and simplified version than a transmitted pattern, but it taps into the same basic concept.

This same principle could possibly be extrapolated to the belief of reincarnation. If you are merely a pattern, when that pattern repeats — or even part of the pattern repeats — then perhaps in a way you are living again.

In terms of the Multiverse Theory — the idea that the universe is infinite and every possible configuration of atoms exists somewhere in this infinite space — you are basically immortal. Your pattern will either be perfectly or near-perfectly represented an infinite number of times across the infinite universe.

That begs the question: are we more than just a pattern? This is the so far insolvable mystery of consciousness. What David Chalmers called the Hard Problem of consciousness: Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience? Why does it feel like something to be me? Why does this pattern have an internal state associated with it, instead of simply existing as a pattern of atomic movement?

If consciousness is simply an emergent phenomenon of that pattern, and if the pattern repeats, then that exact same consciousness might re-emerge. But who is to say how much of that pattern of information is required to have consciousness emerge from it? Would a 99% representation of a pattern be enough for the same consciousness to emerge? For that unique pattern to have an experience associated with it? Would a 50% representation? Would a novel? Would a memory?