Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noah.
Speaker 2: They called me Bed. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 2: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 2: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know. Now, to be honest,
Speaker 2: for anybody who is listening on your podcast platform of
Speaker 2: choice or tuning in to Netflix, your faithful and hopefully
Speaker 2: favorite host just got off a very trippy exploration of
Speaker 2: a bizarre trend that we have been noticing more and
Speaker 2: more of late. Simply put, technological breakthroughs are creating products, goods,
Speaker 2: and services that in practice get really close to the
Speaker 2: old mythology, folklore and legends of times past. Right. I
Speaker 2: think we all had a lot of fun with that one.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we're already taking ourselves like towards the whole
Speaker 3: the mummy trends with our brand new GLP ones. We
Speaker 3: were like pre mummifying ourselves. So now, oh, dear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, right yeah. In that previous episode, is technology
Speaker 2: making legends or magic? Real? We discussed how your local
Speaker 2: garden variety AI chatbot functions kind of like a jin right,
Speaker 2: or like a spirit summon from the ether. Genetic science
Speaker 2: is indeed creating something kind of like chimera. It's just
Speaker 2: a trippy time to be alive. We hope you are
Speaker 2: alive as you are listening to this. Why would we
Speaker 2: even say that? Here's why. There is another huge piece
Speaker 2: of this conversation that we saved for an episode all
Speaker 2: its own. U see, folks, in a very real way,
Speaker 2: emerging technology may also bring back the dead. I can't
Speaker 2: believe we're saying it.
Speaker 3: I can't believe we're saying it either.
Speaker 4: It's been a big year for Frankenstein reboots, so it's
Speaker 4: appropriate I think that that we tackle this topic now
Speaker 4: more than ever.
Speaker 2: Coincidence, right, Shout out to our pals over it Sound
Speaker 2: like and Frequency an amazing hit podcast EP by our
Speaker 2: own Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan that explores the intersection
Speaker 2: between Big Hollywood and UFO disclosure. So can we really
Speaker 2: leverage technology to bring back the dead? Yeah? Kind of
Speaker 2: caveat asterisk fine print. Let's say we get into it.
Speaker 2: Here are the facts. You've said it before. We hate
Speaker 2: to be the fun police about this, but no one
Speaker 2: really knows what happens to you, like your mind, your
Speaker 2: soul after you die, or at least a lot of
Speaker 2: people feel like they know, but they cannot agree on
Speaker 2: a universal definition. But we do know what happens to
Speaker 2: the body, right, we know what happens to the physical corpse.
Speaker 4: Yeah gross stuff, yes, yeah, good, goodie stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, your heart ceases to function, which is one of
Speaker 3: the first things because when that breaks down your other organs,
Speaker 3: the rest of your body doesn't get the oxygen supply
Speaker 3: it needs to function. And what we think is the
Speaker 3: most important one the old brain, the thing locked away
Speaker 3: in your noggin. When that thing doesn't have oxygen, things
Speaker 3: aren't good. And that's when usually massive brain damage occurs.
Speaker 3: Even if you could be brought back, if your brain
Speaker 3: doesn't have oxygen for a while, it's probably not going
Speaker 3: to function.
Speaker 4: Correct. I learned the term from my exploration with the
Speaker 4: pit called brain death. Yea, you know, I mean obviously
Speaker 4: brain dead. I don't why this was a surprise to me,
Speaker 4: but a similar scenario happened where an individual on the
Speaker 4: show lust supply of oxygen to their brain for long
Speaker 4: enough due to a fentanyl overdose, and while their body remains,
Speaker 4: you know, functioning, they were for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 4: you know dead.
Speaker 2: Right and clinically dead is different from legally dead, which
Speaker 2: is a whole other bag of badgers. When your hardware
Speaker 2: breaks down, right, when the body you ride and your
Speaker 2: meat mech begins to folter, your vital organs stop functioning
Speaker 2: in any number of series of orders of operations. This
Speaker 2: leads to the cessation of breathing and heartbeat. Your brain
Speaker 2: activity eventually halts. Rigor mortis sets in. That's the stiffening
Speaker 2: of the cadaver, and depending on pull on the environmental conditions,
Speaker 2: decomposition is going to start shortly after death. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting because we actually know a ton of information about
Speaker 2: the physical process of expiring. And it's primarily because, you know,
Speaker 2: to put it coldly and accurately, we have a huge
Speaker 2: sample size to study. Everybody has ever lived, except arguably
Speaker 2: for Henrietta lax Has has died or at some point
Speaker 2: will die. Life is a terminal condition. So far as
Speaker 2: we know, it is a one Way Street. Also, human
Speaker 2: civilization has this huge obsession with the process of death,
Speaker 2: so we know a ton about the factors involved. We
Speaker 2: know a ton about the science, the environment, the medical conditions,
Speaker 2: the external causes that would be the types of death,
Speaker 2: and on and on and on. There are entire branches
Speaker 2: of medicine and academia dedicated to learning more about this,
Speaker 2: including places like the locally famous or region only famous
Speaker 2: University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center. I think we all
Speaker 2: know the street name, guys.
Speaker 4: The body you tell us, it's the body far.
Speaker 2: I've smelled it, guys.
Speaker 3: I've smelled it many times.
Speaker 4: To smell it from afar like a paper mill on
Speaker 4: a hot day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's specific, Yeah, for anybody's in that area Tennessee.
Speaker 2: And Matt I love Get Out of My Mind Palace.
Speaker 2: Are we both about to shout out the stuff you
Speaker 2: should know? Episode? I was going to?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one of my favorite episodes of that show.
Speaker 3: I think it was a long time ago. It's an
Speaker 3: old one, but an oldie Buddy goody.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: I remember, you know, thinking that oldies jingles were like
Speaker 4: unique to my particular region. But it turns out that
Speaker 4: every one of them had them, and a lot of
Speaker 4: times they were just reused versions of the same ones
Speaker 4: with different call letters. There's always that moment when you
Speaker 4: realize that you're not special. But Ben, I mean yeah,
Speaker 4: Ever since, like you know, the first human noticed somebody
Speaker 4: expiring and started poking them with a stick, I mean,
Speaker 4: that's sort of we've been looking into what happens and
Speaker 4: figuring it out with varying degrees of precision and success.
Speaker 4: But to your previous point, though, no matter how are
Speaker 4: we try, that does not open up any view into
Speaker 4: the afterlife, which is a whole you know thing, the
Speaker 4: region board.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's it's inarguably morbid for a lot
Speaker 2: of people to research physical death, but it's a huge
Speaker 2: part of science, and it's inarguably also a huge benefit
Speaker 2: to living human beings. Like the more we know about death,
Speaker 2: the better prepared we are to stave it off for
Speaker 2: as long as possible. So we want to be clear
Speaker 2: as we're going into this. There has been this tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of tireless research, meaning that humanity is now in
Speaker 2: theory better prepared than ever before to help patients recover
Speaker 2: from diseases and conditions that once upon a time could
Speaker 2: have been a death sentence. You know, no take back seats.
Speaker 2: But I like what you're saying there, Noel, I hope
Speaker 2: we all do about the other side to this. It's
Speaker 2: the one that stretches beyond the bounds of biology and
Speaker 2: hard sciences into much trickier waters philosophy, spirituality, faith. What
Speaker 2: happens to the non tangible you, the you that you
Speaker 2: think of when you think of yourself, when your body
Speaker 2: calls it quits. Where's that guy go? Tbd?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's like, you know, even the existence
Speaker 4: of the soul is not something that is agreed upon
Speaker 4: in any singular fashion or provable per se, despite the
Speaker 4: whole like what is it twenty one grams thing, which
Speaker 4: is always kind of felt like a little bit flim
Speaker 4: flammy to me, But yeah, no it is. It is
Speaker 4: the topic of debate for centuries and centuries, the reason
Speaker 4: for war, the reason for religion, you know, religion. All
Speaker 4: of these various disagreements mainly stem from this idea of
Speaker 4: what happens when we when we die?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the great mystery. What happens after this?
Speaker 3: And where were we before this? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Shout out the Voltaire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the thing, literally the great mystery of
Speaker 3: existence or lie here and I do you know, I
Speaker 3: do wonder as we're going to go through this and
Speaker 3: talk maybe about some of the ritualization of death and
Speaker 3: how different civilizations have kind of prepared the human body
Speaker 3: for whatever that whatever that travel is from this realm
Speaker 3: into that next place, whatever it may be. There's all
Speaker 3: kinds of intricate stuff that goes into making sure you're ready.
Speaker 3: Rules you gotta follow, and if you don't follow those rules,
Speaker 3: you don't get in right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, you you died successfully, but you didn't have
Speaker 2: sky burial. My bad, So now you are the ghost
Speaker 2: of a type predatory bird.
Speaker 4: Well, not to mention the beliefs and you know, actions
Speaker 4: that you participated in while you were alive. There's all
Speaker 4: kinds of rules surrounding that. But I think in the
Speaker 4: past we've certainly seen much more physical manifestations of those
Speaker 4: things in terms of preparing you know, one's mortal remains
Speaker 4: to pass on, and a lot more importance placed on that. Now. Obviously,
Speaker 4: the funeral industry feels a little bit a religious to
Speaker 4: me in some ways, even though it has a chapel
Speaker 4: and it sort of purports to be a service or
Speaker 4: an out crop of religion. It feels a lot more
Speaker 4: corporatized to me, and a lot more separated from any
Speaker 4: particular religious spiritual beliefs. It's interesting, though, maybe I'm overstating
Speaker 4: the case on that line.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. No, it's a paradigm shift right.
Speaker 2: For most of the human's history, a great many religions
Speaker 2: did have and will assert that some aspect of you,
Speaker 2: the mind or the soul, persist after physical death. And
Speaker 2: these belief systems, to that earlier point take it as
Speaker 2: a given or dare I say an article of faith
Speaker 2: that the mind soul proceeds toward other spiritual destinations based
Speaker 2: on one's behavior in life up to and including funeral
Speaker 2: preparation or pre death or write at dewn rituals. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, we have to admit atheistic groups
Speaker 2: argue there is nothing afterward. Science has diplomatically put current science,
Speaker 2: as we record on Friday, April third, twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: that there is no proof of consciousness persisting after the
Speaker 2: death of the physical bodies. No ghosts, no holy spirits,
Speaker 2: no angels, demons, reincarnation consequences zip zilch nada. It's an
Speaker 2: old debate, and it's a debate that's going to continue
Speaker 2: because when you think about it, if you're talking about humans,
Speaker 2: there are billions of stakeholders in this argument.
Speaker 4: So it was no.
Speaker 2: Surprise that a lot of people looked at the available
Speaker 2: evidence or lack thereof, and said, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: going to take it on faith. I'm going to choose
Speaker 2: to believe what I like. If it makes me a
Speaker 2: better person in life, that is great. If it means
Speaker 2: that I'm wrong, it doesn't matter. It is my belief.
Speaker 2: So everyone has their own take. No one can agree
Speaker 2: on what's really happening, and it's always just if you
Speaker 2: want to play it long, get home. It's always fascinating
Speaker 2: to respectfully ask your friends and family for their own
Speaker 2: perspective on death, life's biggest question, and who knows, their
Speaker 2: answers might surprise you. It's always great, especially because most
Speaker 2: people are not super good at actively listening. So if
Speaker 2: you actively listen to someone and you ask them about
Speaker 2: something that really matters to them, their answers are going
Speaker 2: to amaze you.
Speaker 3: That's why last Wills and testaments are so important. Oh
Speaker 3: so they can just let everything you can let somebody
Speaker 3: know without any of that, you just and it becomes
Speaker 3: a legal document right that somebody else can execute.
Speaker 2: Oof.
Speaker 4: You reminded me, I gotta get mind signed. I keep
Speaker 4: putting that off. I did do the thing. Yeah, No,
Speaker 4: I did the thing, and I just got to get
Speaker 4: it notarized. No, it's a really good point. I also
Speaker 4: just want to not walk back what I said earlier.
Speaker 4: But I'm of course aware that there are still very
Speaker 4: many cultures and traditions that have specificurial rights and types
Speaker 4: of cemeteries that have certain you know, criteria for getting
Speaker 4: into them. Ben, You're always talking about the you know,
Speaker 4: remaining tattoo free and all of that.
Speaker 2: Okay, hold on, that's that is partially a misnomer. You
Speaker 2: can be buried in.
Speaker 4: Judaic for if you have Well, I'm just saying it's
Speaker 4: I'm referencing it.
Speaker 2: Just it's like not great. I feel like the Santa
Speaker 2: and I think you should leave, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's like I don't have a problem with it, but
Speaker 2: you can't get a gift that year.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying too as well. He's even the thing
Speaker 4: that I was maybe mentioning regarding the corporatization and the
Speaker 4: sort of more business side of the funeral industry. I mean,
Speaker 4: they're also kind of try to be a one size
Speaker 4: fits all, you know, for any culture, in any faith,
Speaker 4: and they have all of the stuff that they need
Speaker 4: to make sure that they can accommodate, folks. So I
Speaker 4: wasn't intending to say that burial rituals and you know,
Speaker 4: preparing the dead isn't a thing anymore. It has just
Speaker 4: maybe become a little bit more of like a ketch all,
Speaker 4: and it certainly isn't as desperately important and you know,
Speaker 4: focused on as it was and say the days of
Speaker 4: you know, entombing pharaohs.
Speaker 2: In the like, right, Yeah, one hundred percent, well put,
Speaker 2: because we know that these sorts of rituals have unfortunately
Speaker 2: become increasingly monetized or commodified in certain cultures. But we
Speaker 2: also know this is something that so far is going
Speaker 2: to happen to everybody. The debate upon the afterlife still
Speaker 2: has not been universally concluded. But this entire debate, folks,
Speaker 2: is on the cusp of a massive sea change. In
Speaker 2: our twenty fourteen episode The Future of Death, which was
Speaker 2: more than ten years ago, now, we looked at existing
Speaker 2: technology on the horizon at that time, and we asked
Speaker 2: whether science and medicine could Mostly we were asking whether
Speaker 2: it could lead to immortality, whether tech could create real
Speaker 2: life zombies. But if we fast forward to Friday, April third,
Speaker 2: as we record BOYD, to see that science is coming
Speaker 2: closer than ever right now to bringing back the dead
Speaker 2: Kaveat asterisk, Kafiat fine print, Kafia Asterisk fine print, Kafiyah
Speaker 2: astric fine print. Here's where it gets crazy. You heard
Speaker 2: us correctly, fellow conspiracy realist bringing back the dead again asterix,
Speaker 2: Kaveat fine print a plenty. Maybe, First, guys, we talked
Speaker 2: about what we're not saying, Like, we're not saying anybody
Speaker 2: has made a quantum powered wijaboard just yet.
Speaker 4: No, we're not talking about the gritty Frankenstein reboot, you know,
Speaker 4: made real resurrection men digging up bodies, reanimating the dead.
Speaker 4: In that respect, we're also not saying that anyone has
Speaker 4: developed some kind of you know, steam as you put
Speaker 4: Ben in the dock here, quantum powered steam punk Duisi
Speaker 4: board that can you know, communicate beyond the ale with
Speaker 4: the spirits of the deceased. Science, as we pointed out
Speaker 4: just doesn't have any proof of any such spirits or
Speaker 4: even of the existence of soul or whatever quantifiable energy
Speaker 4: occupies our meat bodies that animates us and makes a
Speaker 4: sense of human people. Most of that research just specifically
Speaker 4: about neuro transmitters and the brain, and that's sort of
Speaker 4: where it ends. And not to say that people aren't
Speaker 4: trying to find those answers. So no one's really made
Speaker 4: any sort of drug, for example, that is able to
Speaker 4: quote unquote be a life extension technology. We know that
Speaker 4: people have crazy regimes to you know, make themselves younger,
Speaker 4: and this idea of secret life extension technology for the
Speaker 4: ultra ultra elite has certainly been in the conversation for
Speaker 4: a long time. But it's my understanding. Guys, correct me
Speaker 4: if I'm wrong. We don't have any hard evidence of
Speaker 4: that either.
Speaker 2: Not of efficacy at least correct.
Speaker 3: We don't have the kill switch technology yet either. That
Speaker 3: exists in X Files season five, episode eleven, where you
Speaker 3: upload your consciousness into some sort of computer or like
Speaker 3: Westworld style. Currently that's not available.
Speaker 2: We also know there are no strange helmets, right like
Speaker 2: the god helmet of Hitchin's fame. There are no dimensional
Speaker 2: portals allowing you to traverse into the afterlife. Flat Liners
Speaker 2: is a great film. Okay, that is a hill that
Speaker 2: we will maybe not die on, but we'll take a
Speaker 2: shot in the butt for it. Flat Liners is a
Speaker 2: phenomenal work of fiction, but it still remains a work
Speaker 2: of fiction. However, this is why we're doing an episode
Speaker 2: on this. Human civilization is learning and has learned a
Speaker 2: lot about bringing people very close to death and then
Speaker 2: bringing them back over that rubicon. A lot of this,
Speaker 2: and I swear we talked about this previously. A lot
Speaker 2: of this hinges on the extreme hibernation techniques that we
Speaker 2: already see in some of Earth's other organisms. So in
Speaker 2: the in the film Flatliners and countless other novels and
Speaker 2: adaptations of novels, you will see somebody who's trying to,
Speaker 2: as you said, Noel, do a little bit of frankensteiny stuff,
Speaker 2: and they're dropping someone's temperature, they're slowing and stopping their
Speaker 2: heart rate, and then they are bringing them back right
Speaker 2: usually through you know, the clear electric paddles, maybe some CPR.
Speaker 4: Sure, or even the sci fi trope of like cryopods
Speaker 4: or cryostasis, or being able to traverse massive distances in
Speaker 4: space that would cause one to like age or whatever,
Speaker 4: being able to keep them in some sort of stasis. Like,
Speaker 4: that's not a thing we can do either. It's not
Speaker 4: exactly the same, but it's similar.
Speaker 2: Theoretically, right, besides exist, But it's all these pesky laws. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm kidding, you're You're right, nol. It's a matter of
Speaker 2: some hard technical limits that have to be traversed. We
Speaker 2: do know, though, that some organisms can enter torper, something
Speaker 2: very close to death, for extreme amounts of time. I
Speaker 2: want to give a shout out to tartar grades aka
Speaker 2: street name water bears or sometimes I forgot, we never
Speaker 2: mentioned this one. Sometimes they're called mossy pigs. Not flattering.
Speaker 4: No, tartar grades are big. Tartar grades and Axilotel's are
Speaker 4: big in the plushy community.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, okay, I mean, and tartar grades also
Speaker 2: real life tartar grades can enter hibernation, extreme hibernation for
Speaker 2: much longer than any human beings that we know of.
Speaker 2: Fun fact, tartar grade torper, it has a specific word.
Speaker 2: It's called two.
Speaker 4: That's fun And I mean what you're describing there, too,
Speaker 4: is a lot like the cryostasis that I was talking about,
Speaker 4: because we also have evidence of water bears or tartar
Speaker 4: grades surviving in deep space with this very method more
Speaker 4: or less right.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. And at the same time that they're
Speaker 2: in that torpor they are they are soldiering through incredibly
Speaker 2: high exposure to radiation right other nasty stuff. So to
Speaker 2: model oneself after the tartar grade means that you could
Speaker 2: theoretically create a human who gets close to something like
Speaker 2: death and then you know, you reheat them like microwave meal.
Speaker 2: We also know we've talked about this extensively. We know
Speaker 2: that scientists have thoroughly studied the phenomena that we call
Speaker 2: nd or near death experience. Thankfully, the patients who are
Speaker 2: reporting in these studies, they're not seeing the hellish haunting
Speaker 2: landscapes from flatliners, but they do report some unusual stuff
Speaker 2: and similar, I would say to reports of people on
Speaker 2: DMT or certain lucinogens. It's kind of freaky how so
Speaker 2: many people with an NDE report something similar when they
Speaker 2: come back, even if they've never spoken to other NDE survivors.
Speaker 4: Mm HM, and shout out to our buddy Dan Bush
Speaker 4: and his podcast series Alive Again. I'll find an episode
Speaker 4: where we chatted with him about some of the near
Speaker 4: death experiences that he reported on in that series. So
Speaker 4: it's definitely a cool exploration of that kind of stuff
Speaker 4: and super relevant to what we're talking about today.
Speaker 3: I would just say when it comes to near death experiences,
Speaker 3: there is such a wide range of report and experience there,
Speaker 3: everything from nothingness to the kind of the punishment, the
Speaker 3: great punishment, experiencing all the things that you've done but
Speaker 3: from the perspective of the people you did them to,
Speaker 3: to that welcoming light concept, to being on a stone
Speaker 3: slab looking out at some kind of nebula where stars
Speaker 3: are forming and life is created. There's just such I'm
Speaker 3: ap on that show. So I'm just yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: mean to go to too deeply, but there's such a
Speaker 3: range of experiences that have occurred. It does make me
Speaker 3: wonder and maybe i'm you know, quite a bit influence,
Speaker 3: but it makes me pulled more into a camp of
Speaker 3: science just doesn't understand yet what consciousness is, because we
Speaker 3: know that's true, so there might be there's a possibility
Speaker 3: that consciousness does extend out. It's just we don't know
Speaker 3: how it interacts once the body has died too.
Speaker 4: If like these near death experiences or obviously we don't
Speaker 4: have the reports from the people that you know went
Speaker 4: all the way, are not akin to dreams the way
Speaker 4: our experience dictates what our brain, what images our brain
Speaker 4: presents us with when we're asleep. If there is a
Speaker 4: world where as your brain is dying, it's sort of
Speaker 4: recalling things or presenting you with something that maybe is
Speaker 4: influenced by your beliefs or your experiences, this idea of
Speaker 4: your life flashing before your eyes, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm glad you said that. Though yet it's almost
Speaker 2: seen and setting, is it not. You know, we do
Speaker 2: have the science to rely upon if you go to
Speaker 2: folks like a professor named Sam Parnia. He's an expert
Speaker 2: in cardiac arrest survivors, and he says, you know, the
Speaker 2: statistics again to that earlier point are kind of dodgy, right,
Speaker 2: because these are self reported experiences, and you'll see a
Speaker 2: lot of statistics that say, yes, these are varied, but
Speaker 2: a majority or a slight majority people encounter what Parnea
Speaker 2: calls quote a right and welcoming light, going into a
Speaker 2: tunnel toward a beautiful place, seeing relatives welcome them, maybe
Speaker 2: even a panoramic view of their lives. And again that's
Speaker 2: not me, that is Sam Parnia, who has studied cardiac
Speaker 2: arrest survivors in particular. And to go to stay on
Speaker 2: the science here, what if these are not epic metaphysical
Speaker 2: road trips. It is true to that earlier point that
Speaker 2: humanity still cannot define nor truly understand consciousness. But what
Speaker 2: if on a physical level, on a neurological level, these
Speaker 2: are hallucinations caused by dying brains. Science has attempted to
Speaker 2: explain at least one of the most common report of
Speaker 2: a near death experience, which is seeing that tunnel of light.
Speaker 2: In particular, they're saying, once your heart stops beating, right,
Speaker 2: not everything stops at once. Once your heart stops beating,
Speaker 2: your brain's visual cortex gets activated by a surge of
Speaker 2: electrical activity, and this can continue up to thirty seconds
Speaker 2: after an individual is dead. So the burst is thought
Speaker 2: by a lot of the waffins to account for this
Speaker 2: highly visual experience that people have. And then your heart restarts,
Speaker 2: and then your back right, and everybody is saying, hey,
Speaker 2: what happened, and you say it was crazy? Man, it
Speaker 2: was a wild ride.
Speaker 3: The only thing that I would fight back against. I know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot I would fight back against that a lot,
Speaker 3: just because some people have died for minutes, for seconds,
Speaker 3: for even longer than that. In very rare cases, people have,
Speaker 3: you know, spent twenty minutes clinically dead or you know,
Speaker 3: almost thirty minutes clinically dead. So it just and who's
Speaker 3: to say what the subjective experience is if we're talking
Speaker 3: about these surges of electrical activity and what that would
Speaker 3: look like, you know, from a visual perspective inside a
Speaker 3: body that's going through that. I like that there's science.
Speaker 3: I just I think we're dealing in a realm here
Speaker 3: that is a little, at least currently outside of the
Speaker 3: scope of measurability. I think I tend to agree with
Speaker 3: that as well.
Speaker 4: Like I mean, I'm not a religious person, and I
Speaker 4: don't really hold any particular beliefs regarding the afterlife, but
Speaker 4: I do think that there is obviously something that's outside
Speaker 4: of just electrical impulses and organs that inform who we
Speaker 4: are as people, and I'm absolutely curious as to what
Speaker 4: happens to that. I do think it is some sort
Speaker 4: of harnessing of electricity and in data points and information
Speaker 4: that coalesce into you know, a personality and a human
Speaker 4: And I have a hard time believing that that just
Speaker 4: disappears if we're talking about energy being able to be
Speaker 4: not be destroyed, you know.
Speaker 2: But I don't know about any of that stuff.
Speaker 4: But I'm with you, Matt. I think a lot of
Speaker 4: this stuff is outside of the realm of It's again,
Speaker 4: it's that crossover between spirituality or metaphysics and you know, physics.
Speaker 2: And I appreciate that point. No, you know, this is
Speaker 2: this is the important part of human civilization. Has yet
Speaker 2: to crack the code on bringing back anybody who has
Speaker 2: been clinically dead past a certain amount of time. So
Speaker 2: to that earlier comment, you know, generally spending more than
Speaker 2: thirty minutes clinically dead and coming back without major brain
Speaker 2: damage is very rare. The current world record for being
Speaker 2: clinically dead and returning without being heavily damaged goes to
Speaker 2: Velma Thomas. Velma Thomas in two thousand and eight was
Speaker 2: clinically dead. Forget this, folks, seventeen hours after suffering multiple
Speaker 2: cardiac arrest and another get this. While we're getting each
Speaker 2: other she was an organ donor, so Thomas literally woke
Speaker 2: up alive, conscious, breathing as medics were preparing to take
Speaker 2: out her bits. Now that's nightmare fuel seventeen hours. That's
Speaker 2: the record. Also, don't try that at home. It's weird because,
Speaker 2: as I think we can all agree we're saying here,
Speaker 2: every so often we discover another puzzle piece, another fascinating
Speaker 2: bit of knowledge or research, forcing us to rethink existing
Speaker 2: paradigms and assumptions, not just about the world, but about
Speaker 2: ourselves and more importantly, about the world in which we live.
Speaker 2: So thousands of thousands of thousands of years into the
Speaker 2: game called humanity, civilization is still having to ask, you
Speaker 2: know what if So if we were all to try
Speaker 2: and leverage current and emergent technology, could we make a
Speaker 2: real life Lazarus? How I think we can posit. The
Speaker 2: two biggest paths right now are what we can call
Speaker 2: replacement and recreation. Also a tricky word because I almost
Speaker 2: said recreation, But whatever.
Speaker 3: Are we talking about? The startup that's trying to make
Speaker 3: brainless human clones that you can put your brain into.
Speaker 4: Well, geez, when you put it like that, Matt, it
Speaker 4: sounds like, yeah, that would be correct.
Speaker 2: That is our three bios, So to give you some
Speaker 2: setup before to get to them. This idea of replacement
Speaker 2: addresses what we can call the body problem, not the
Speaker 2: three body problem, but the basic concept is if a
Speaker 2: person is in decent cognitive shape, like their brain, their
Speaker 2: software is fine, but their body is failing. What if
Speaker 2: we could create a new body and insert that healthy
Speaker 2: brain into that. This body could be electronic, a biomechanical hybrid,
Speaker 2: it could be entirely organic. Talk about shades of Sci
Speaker 2: Fi heads floating in jars, you know, giant robots steered
Speaker 2: by a little human brain in their guts.
Speaker 3: Are we talking about crying craying?
Speaker 2: My guy? Right, that's pretty far out, but we may
Speaker 2: be closer than the public assumes. So. Just a few
Speaker 2: days ago and a little bit longer, the news broke
Speaker 2: about a startup company called R three bio out of Richmond, California. Now,
Speaker 2: until MI T Technology Review did a little bit of
Speaker 2: deep diving, R three bio was saying, we want to
Speaker 2: raise money to create non sentient monkey based organ sacks.
Speaker 2: They're phrases not ours, not mine. That's good that don't
Speaker 2: attack me for that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, just organiz I'm impressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's and their their pitches. It's an alternative to
Speaker 2: animal testing. Right, So now we're not actually harming a
Speaker 2: conscious sentient being. We have just grown a thing that
Speaker 2: has a kidney that we can experiment on. But it
Speaker 2: turns out in private, they've been pitching the idea of
Speaker 2: creating brainless clones to serve as human backup bodies.
Speaker 4: Yes, indeed, a journalist Antonio Regalado describes it thusly, imagine
Speaker 4: it like this, a baby version of yourself with only
Speaker 4: enough of a brain structure to be alive in case
Speaker 4: you ever need a new kidney or a liver, or
Speaker 4: alternatively found John Skolndorn has speculated you might one day
Speaker 4: get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could
Speaker 4: be a way to gain second lifespan through a still
Speaker 4: a hypothetical procedure known as body transplant. Guys, this is
Speaker 4: giving blood boy the energy, but like an escalation of
Speaker 4: that that obviously only the mega mega mega mega mega
Speaker 4: mega rich are going to be able to mess with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, let's say, okay, so let's take that
Speaker 2: argument in good faith. Let's say someone has experienced catastrophic
Speaker 2: physical trauma, maybe something fatal or an otherwise fatal cardiac arrest.
Speaker 2: If they had this service, and this service worked and
Speaker 2: everything went according to plan, their physical body, their body
Speaker 2: prime would die while their brain was somehow preserved and
Speaker 2: then inserted into the new largely brainless weighting body. The
Speaker 2: person then, in a sense, would have died and been resurrected.
Speaker 2: There's some ethical quandaries, you know, couple.
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil anything, but definitely check out
Speaker 3: Jordan Peele's get Out Do.
Speaker 2: It, very good banger. Check out all this stuff.
Speaker 3: This particular thing. Did you guys see some recent studies.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much I wait, I would put
Speaker 3: on them to the individual studies, but talking about cellular
Speaker 3: consciousness as though individual cells actually store memories, and this
Speaker 3: potential that the entire body is what becomes consciousness through
Speaker 3: all the organs and through the connectivity and the electrical
Speaker 3: and the stuff your heart does with essentially these energy fields.
Speaker 3: It's weird. It's kind of it's kind of it seems
Speaker 3: why I could do But it also seems almost to
Speaker 3: make more sense to me than some of the other
Speaker 3: biological explanations that we've had for consciousness and just neural
Speaker 3: it's just neural connections, guys.
Speaker 2: I mean quadum physics. It gets neurobiology gets so close
Speaker 2: to spirituality at some point, you know, I love the
Speaker 2: idea that ultimately, right now, so many things that are
Speaker 2: accepted as normal sounded bonkers, right, electric lights, light after dark?
Speaker 2: That's not based on burning animal fat. Get them out
Speaker 2: of here. That guy's a warlock. Maybe we're in that stage.
Speaker 2: We're also in the stage where some of the world's
Speaker 2: smartest people get together and they say, I don't know
Speaker 2: what if you know, what if it's consciousness as a
Speaker 2: sell you know, on a cellular level.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a fun wd if to say, what if
Speaker 3: we could take that brain out of that dead body,
Speaker 3: put it into a new body that has the same
Speaker 3: blood type. Obviously, and now they've just got a we
Speaker 3: got a crane on our hands, except it's up here
Speaker 3: instead of down there in the tummy. But how do
Speaker 3: you get past the whole brain damage of it? All? This?
Speaker 3: You know, once you would have to get somebody into surgery,
Speaker 3: real quick.
Speaker 2: Tight time window. Yeah, just like flatliners. But we have
Speaker 2: a couple of yeah, ethic quandary, ethical quandaries aside, we
Speaker 2: have a couple of hard operational badgers and rub a
Speaker 2: CODs to traverse artificial wounds do not yet exist, so
Speaker 2: brainless bodies cannot be grown in a lab. That means
Speaker 2: that the first batch of these brainless clones would have
Speaker 2: to be carried by human women paid to do the job.
Speaker 2: In the future, however, you could place that first wave
Speaker 2: by making one brainless clone that can give birth to another.
Speaker 2: Nothing evil or ghoulish about that.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, wait wait, didn't we just talk about an
Speaker 3: artificial womb on Strange News a little while back. The
Speaker 3: company that's that's their goal is to produce artificial wounds.
Speaker 2: It's their goal, but they haven't attained it yet. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: And like, secondly to your point, once we're over the
Speaker 2: habeas corpus badger, right, once we have the replacement body,
Speaker 2: how do we connect the brain. This is one of
Speaker 2: the trickiest things again, ethics Asi. Right now, brains cannot
Speaker 2: be reattached to the spinal cord after an injury. That's
Speaker 2: because the central nervous system itself has an extremely limited
Speaker 2: ability to self repair. Right. That's why some of the
Speaker 2: most wealthy people are powerful people. You could imagine when
Speaker 2: they encounter paralytic injury to their spinal cord like Christopher
Speaker 2: Reeves would be an example. There is no medicine yet
Speaker 2: that can repair that. So how would we be able to,
Speaker 2: like what kind of mechanism or improvement would need to
Speaker 2: be extant or in play for us to take a
Speaker 2: brain out in that tight time window you just described
Speaker 2: and then plug it in, you know. Shout out to
Speaker 2: anybody who's done cable management in the past, any it
Speaker 2: folks who had to run a surfer and figure out
Speaker 2: where all the wires go. This is that times like
Speaker 2: a million, if not a billion. We can't do it yet.
Speaker 3: Quick shout out to the artificial womb thing. I remembered
Speaker 3: this from a Guardian article. There's there's a website called
Speaker 3: aqua womb dot eu where you can check out the
Speaker 3: perhaps the closest that we have right now to this
Speaker 3: thing that looks like an artificial womb where a like
Speaker 3: a baby could grow and gestate very simpimilarly to being
Speaker 3: in a woman's womb.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and hopefully that will be on the way because
Speaker 2: it is. It is potentially life saving technology, but it's
Speaker 2: still technology, which means it can be used for good
Speaker 2: or for real technology is not inherently moralistic if we Okay,
Speaker 2: so let's say the artificial womb thing works out, right,
Speaker 2: Let's say the brainless clone quote unquote is created, and
Speaker 2: let's say there's a way to we figure out some
Speaker 2: interface where you can hook up a brain to a
Speaker 2: new body the same way you would put it an
Speaker 2: old school Nintendo cartridge. Right, Maybe you just blow at
Speaker 2: the end of it if it doesn't connect first, and
Speaker 2: then you pop it back in. I am dating myself.
Speaker 3: That's a really interesting idea. If you could connect it
Speaker 3: to a device so it's not physically connected to whatever
Speaker 3: the body is. That feels like you're getting more into
Speaker 3: the robotics version of this.
Speaker 2: That'd be the biomechanical hybrid for sure. And like, the
Speaker 2: only way you could tell if someone came back from
Speaker 2: the dead was they would have a little ring of
Speaker 2: metal around their net. I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna show you, guys, not this episode. But
Speaker 2: so even after we solve for those two hard operational issues, guys,
Speaker 2: this is a legal ethical disaster. It is. It would
Speaker 2: be unprecedented in all of human history. Is the new
Speaker 2: You still legally you your fingerprints, right, your face, your retina,
Speaker 2: they will all be different. Do you still have the
Speaker 2: same assets? Do you still have to pay your carn
Speaker 2: and your student loan? Do you have the same Social
Speaker 2: Security number? Are you like legally divorced? Are you still marry?
Speaker 2: I think if history is any indicator, humanity is going
Speaker 2: to wrestle with this or try to legislate this technology
Speaker 2: only in reaction to it, which means a beat me here,
Speaker 2: Dylan and Jordan. A ton of people are going to
Speaker 2: suffer in the process, especially the early adopters. I don't
Speaker 2: know that's up. There were brain implants. Would you guys
Speaker 2: do it? Would you guys try it?
Speaker 3: Those early adopters are going to pay a craft ton
Speaker 3: of money to be a part of it into some early.
Speaker 2: Adoption though, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And also you know, early adopters typically get like they're
Speaker 4: the guinea pigs. They're paying out of the nose to
Speaker 4: be the guinea pigs for the thing.
Speaker 3: But they'll get their name on that brick.
Speaker 2: You also get your name in the history book. You
Speaker 2: just don't know how right, You don't know if you're
Speaker 2: a footnote or a chapter. And that happens to a
Speaker 2: lot of people.
Speaker 3: I helped make this ballroom. I mean this, what are
Speaker 3: we talking about.
Speaker 2: General Vaughan on Sandwich, the fourteenth of the third died
Speaker 2: in the world's first marginally successful brain replacement transplant therapy.
Speaker 2: His final words were, man, man you So maybe there's
Speaker 2: another way to bring back the dead them. We outlined
Speaker 2: two paths. This is the first one, right replacement of
Speaker 2: some sort at base, this text idea is arguably a
Speaker 2: little less coolish. I would say it's a different kind
Speaker 2: of ghoulish, but it still carries a huge wave of
Speaker 2: ethical dilemmas in its wake. Let's call this one resurrection
Speaker 2: by recreation. Ooh, let's take a break. We'll be right back. Recreation, Dylan,
Speaker 2: if you will some cinematic music, picture your brain. If
Speaker 2: you have an MRI scan lying around, now's the time
Speaker 2: to pick that bad oy up. Play a long guit home.
Speaker 2: Look at it. Your brain is astonishing, Just like a
Speaker 2: snowflake or a fingerprint. It is inherently unique. It is
Speaker 2: the engine power in all of human civilization, and humans
Speaker 2: still don't fully understand how it works. End scene.
Speaker 3: I mean, who I really thought you said recreation and
Speaker 3: I was getting all excited.
Speaker 2: I was like, are we going to the park, throw
Speaker 2: the frisbee of the mind, I mean, without soapboxing, guys.
Speaker 2: I think it's best for all of us to think
Speaker 2: of our minds or souls, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 2: less like an entity, less like a distinct dot in
Speaker 2: the landscape of reality, and more like a pattern. More
Speaker 2: poetically put, a song that sings itself. The billions of
Speaker 2: blips and electrical and chemical activity that occur at every
Speaker 2: second of your lived existence in your brain cumulate to
Speaker 2: create a byzantine series of circuits and functions, memories, emotions, imaginings.
Speaker 2: That is, all of those things, they're the notes in
Speaker 2: the song that is you. So what if we can
Speaker 2: map all of that out? What if we could recreate
Speaker 2: it flawlessly and an emulation with such very similitude that
Speaker 2: it is inseparable or in disinguishable from the original. It'd
Speaker 2: be a cover band right of your soul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you could make you if you could somehow
Speaker 3: digitize it right, you could make as many copies as
Speaker 3: you want. You could make like cortical stacks and put
Speaker 3: them in the necks of folks, you know, and then
Speaker 3: you could alter that carbon shout out.
Speaker 2: I thought that was very well done. You could also
Speaker 2: make some little tweaks, right if you're a capitalist endeavor.
Speaker 2: Just last year, Google and Harvard announced the most detailed
Speaker 2: map of the human brain so far. This is not
Speaker 2: the same thing as mapping an entire human personality via
Speaker 2: brain activity. Similar to a map of Iran that just
Speaker 2: has topography in cities and maybe hidden missile bases. That's
Speaker 2: not going to be the map that captures the names, relationships,
Speaker 2: and goals of the people who actually live in Iran.
Speaker 2: So we don't have a full full map out yet,
Speaker 2: but it is theoretically possible. It is theoretically possible to
Speaker 2: map out all the activities of a human brain. It
Speaker 2: is theoretically possible to recreate that entire pattern on a
Speaker 2: different medium. To wit, it is theoretically possible to create
Speaker 2: a copy of your soul on a circuit board. I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, I don't know if I love it.
Speaker 3: It just gets back to that dang problem. We just
Speaker 3: don't fully know how these systems work together to make
Speaker 3: you you and play that lovely song. And we just
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, do we have to attach the gut biome
Speaker 2: as well as another factor of variables that influences personality
Speaker 2: and behavior.
Speaker 3: It very likely might be a huge part of how
Speaker 3: the signals actually get to you and all of those
Speaker 3: receptors that we're talking about. We always think it's all
Speaker 3: up in the head part, but man, there is other stuff.
Speaker 3: We know that that biome can make you feel certain
Speaker 3: ways and even act differently.
Speaker 2: What was it was a stick you said, if you
Speaker 2: eat wrong, you think wrong. That was another guy he
Speaker 2: must end, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I know that's true. Who ever said it? Truth?
Speaker 2: I mean, if we could figure this out, we being civilization,
Speaker 2: not your humble and hopefully favorite host, If we could
Speaker 2: figure this out. From that point, it becomes relatively trivial
Speaker 2: to create a means of communication from that circuit board
Speaker 2: or that other medium to the outside world. That becomes
Speaker 2: a new ship of thesis. This copy would be a
Speaker 2: recreation of your brain activity in all respects. It would
Speaker 2: theoretically function a lot like you. But would it be you?
Speaker 2: What happens if someone gets the first comprehensive reproduction without dying,
Speaker 2: they speak directly to it. Would you prime and you
Speaker 2: two point zero get along? What would you guys talk about?
Speaker 2: I mean, we're not there yet, but this is one
Speaker 2: of those Atopica bases. This is like a mind breaker
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I stay up too much thinking about
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 3: Me and my other cortical stack would just talk about
Speaker 3: Jerry Seinfeld and.
Speaker 2: And what's the deal with cortical stacks.
Speaker 3: In the Epstein files?
Speaker 2: What's the deal with Jeffrey? I think you guys have
Speaker 2: a great conversation. I mean, we're not there yet in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, but we are way closer than at
Speaker 2: any point known history. Make no mistake, this is on
Speaker 2: the way, fellow conspiracy realist, humanity is yet to create
Speaker 2: a one hundred percent accurate functional representation of a single
Speaker 2: human mind. But we have to remember science is a
Speaker 2: battle of increments more often than it is a battle
Speaker 2: of huge cinematic revelations. So we are getting closer and
Speaker 2: closer to the goal. It weighs that terrify a lot
Speaker 2: of observers, and you don't have to wait for one
Speaker 2: hundred percent ship of thesis emulated human to emerge just yet.
Speaker 2: The short term is arguably even a little bit scarier.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about death bots? Those are like the
Speaker 2: proto types.
Speaker 3: Is this the thing where we're talking about scanning all
Speaker 3: of the online presence from someone and theoretically making using
Speaker 3: an LLM to recreate someone's preferences, maybe sarcasm levels, what
Speaker 3: else their.
Speaker 2: Speech cadence, especially if you have audio, their reread elections, values, opinions,
Speaker 2: interaction statements.
Speaker 3: This is even making a virtual version, right, like virtually
Speaker 3: represented physical version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then put your dead mom in a rumba.
Speaker 2: See how that works? Yeah? But yeah, the short term
Speaker 2: nailed it. There is for now powered by big data.
Speaker 2: If you're like a lot of people these days, to
Speaker 2: that earlier point, you have some sort of social media presence,
Speaker 2: you have some sort of handle and Gretel level breadcrumbs
Speaker 2: of online activity. You have a footprint to fingerprint. So
Speaker 2: the more online you are, and the more well docked
Speaker 2: imented your thoughts and activities are, the closer the boffins
Speaker 2: can get to making an imperfect emulation of you. Street
Speaker 2: name deathbots. They're designed to simulate voices, interaction patterns, personalities
Speaker 2: of the deceased. So everything you can feed into this
Speaker 2: combine harvester voice recordings, text messages, email, social media posts. Right,
Speaker 2: what are they like and dislike? What do they love?
Speaker 2: What made them toss? The anger emoji? Or you know,
Speaker 2: like a sunglasses emoji. It things you can create interactive
Speaker 2: avatars that appear to speak from beyond the grave, not
Speaker 2: white bring him back the dead. But a lot of
Speaker 2: people refer to this as technology of illusion.
Speaker 3: Who guys, I cannot remember. A while back at in
Speaker 3: the House Stuff Works Days, we were talking about a
Speaker 3: scientist that created a robot head. It's like the head
Speaker 3: in just the upper torso here, and it was modeled
Speaker 3: after his spouse. I believe that's right. Oh, it was
Speaker 3: an attempt early on to do this very thing we're
Speaker 3: talking about to rebuild espouse's I guess personality as this
Speaker 3: physical thing he could talk to and interact with. I
Speaker 3: cannot remember for the life of me the name of
Speaker 3: the person. It's not Paul Ekman, No, no Hanson? No
Speaker 3: is it David Hanson? Do you remember?
Speaker 4: Can you?
Speaker 3: Can you guys picture this in your head?
Speaker 2: Yah? Yeah, no, No, I know exactly. I mean, even
Speaker 2: in this head, I know exactly the one you're talking about.
Speaker 2: I just it's on the tip of my tongue. Please
Speaker 2: let us know, because that was again to that point
Speaker 2: that that is a study of science as a battle
Speaker 2: of incremental wins, right, but it's it's still it's it's
Speaker 2: pretty creepy, you know. They're also following up on that.
Speaker 2: I love this point because there are years of research
Speaker 2: going into this. There are right now as we record
Speaker 2: on April twenty six, there are multiple organizations doing this stuff,
Speaker 2: doing it as a business. If you go to The
Speaker 2: Conversation in November twenty twenty five, you'll see an excellent
Speaker 2: piece by the experts Eva Nietto, McVoy and Jenny Kidd,
Speaker 2: who are experimenting with these services as part of something
Speaker 2: called Synthetic Past. Synthetic Past explores the impact technology as
Speaker 2: on the preservation of personal and collective memory, and guys,
Speaker 2: they describe everything they did as fascinating and unsettling. Maybe
Speaker 2: we can go to a direct quote on how they
Speaker 2: describe these systems.
Speaker 3: Just before we jump into that. Guys, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: use Google right here to use keywords to find the
Speaker 3: dang thing that I can see in my head. I
Speaker 3: remember it, and it just doesn't seem to exist. I'm
Speaker 3: doing all kinds of the you know, the super searcher tricks,
Speaker 3: using quotations and minuses and all the other stuff. I
Speaker 3: swear it. It just does not function anymore. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 4: Oh dear wow, good thing, we got some info right
Speaker 4: in front of us. Google Free. So they describe their
Speaker 4: discoveries as quote both fascinating and unsettling, which I think
Speaker 4: we can all concur with saying that some quote systems
Speaker 4: focus on preserving memory. They help users record and store
Speaker 4: personal stories organized by themes convenient, such as childhood, family
Speaker 4: or advice for loved ones. These agents then index the
Speaker 4: contents and guide people through it like a searchable archive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and other companies are going to use what they
Speaker 2: call generative AI to make and participate in ongoing dialogue,
Speaker 2: ongoing conversations. So you could upload, for example, all the
Speaker 2: data you have from this once living person. From there,
Speaker 2: the system creates a chatbot that not only responds in
Speaker 2: the dead individual's tone and stuff, but further leverages machine
Speaker 2: learning to evolve and refine itself over time. Recently, in
Speaker 2: an episode of Sauce on the Side, we talked about
Speaker 2: this as a technique that could possibly fix the time
Speaker 2: window biological limits of replacement technology, because in theory, you
Speaker 2: just need the right system and as much data as possible.
Speaker 2: You don't actually need the brain. You don't have to
Speaker 2: have the happiest corpus moment. In fact, you could go
Speaker 2: through history and find anybody who is extremely well documented
Speaker 2: and I think we're talking about Kissinger with Gandhi, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Henry Kissinger. You could take everything we know about that
Speaker 2: guy and all the audio video clips, and you use
Speaker 2: that existing data to create what we would call Kissinger
Speaker 2: from beyond the Grave. And if you had the right
Speaker 2: amount of programming finesse, old KFBTG wouldn't just be regaling
Speaker 2: us with his previous war crimes. You could feed this
Speaker 2: thing new information about current events, and the way it
Speaker 2: would react would be very similar to the way Kissinger
Speaker 2: Prime would react if the old villain was still cooking well.
Speaker 4: And this is another example of technology outpacing legislation and
Speaker 4: the idea of personhood and such like. If we were
Speaker 4: at a situation where we had robust enough facsimiles of
Speaker 4: people from the past that were then used in some
Speaker 4: sort of consulting capacity, actually, you know, participating in making
Speaker 4: decisions of a great magnitude that affect human beings. I
Speaker 4: just feel like that's something that the.
Speaker 2: Law would want to weigh in on.
Speaker 4: But as we know these days, the deal is just
Speaker 4: kind of you know, asking for forgiveness, not even asking
Speaker 4: for forgiveness, just doing the thing and then waiting to
Speaker 4: get sued and then seeing what happens later.
Speaker 2: You know, first we asked for funding, and we ask
Speaker 2: for forgiveness.
Speaker 4: If we ever asked for forgiveness.
Speaker 2: Shout out to R three. Yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 2: happening now. There's a great article as we make the
Speaker 2: Rounds artificially alive at exploration of AI resurrections and spectral
Speaker 2: labor modes in a post mortal society. This is a banger.
Speaker 2: Read it if you get a chance. They're looking at
Speaker 2: more than fifty real world cases from across the planet
Speaker 2: where these and similar technologies are used to recreate the voices, faces,
Speaker 2: and personalities of dead human beings. It's astonishing, it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: Remember how we said this scenario has its own ethical
Speaker 2: tsunamis on the way. Imagine how this could impact grieving
Speaker 2: loved ones. How many of us are really emotionally prepared
Speaker 2: to speak with our dead mothers or dead fathers when
Speaker 2: doing so help or hinder your grieving process? I mean,
Speaker 2: Jesus Hubert Christ, what would you do if you booted
Speaker 2: up the program for the first time, and your mom's
Speaker 2: first words were, I begged you not to bring me back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're just like kill me. Like that's another sci
Speaker 4: fi t But we talked about that with Gandhi as well,
Speaker 4: the idea of how she kind of started goofing around
Speaker 4: with a video generation software to kind of see how
Speaker 4: someone made a video that sort of punked her and
Speaker 4: made her look like she was like making out with
Speaker 4: somebody at a party, and then before she knew it,
Speaker 4: she was on that slippery slope of bringing back her
Speaker 4: her deceased you know, the love of her life, ex boyfriend,
Speaker 4: ex partner, And what a quick walk that was, and
Speaker 4: how she immediately saw the temptation of it, and saw
Speaker 4: the intoxication of it and what a dangerous thing it
Speaker 4: could be and backed the frick away from it.
Speaker 3: I know myself enough to know that I would find
Speaker 3: a way to pay an exorbitant amount of money to
Speaker 3: be able to have philosophical discussions with my grandfather again.
Speaker 3: But if it was through a service like this, and
Speaker 3: I knew that it was just a representation, a phony
Speaker 3: version of him, I would not pay that money, right
Speaker 3: because ultimately, you want to have discussions. You know, somebody
Speaker 3: like my grandfather who was really interested in more in
Speaker 3: his own mortality and what comes next and all the
Speaker 3: things we're talking about today, then talking to some generated
Speaker 3: version that's just going to pull from the Internet ideas about,
Speaker 3: you know, potentially what he's experiencing in the FROA. It
Speaker 3: would just be this thing that's meant to make you
Speaker 3: feel a way, kind of the way lllms do all
Speaker 3: across the board.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a great idea. No, I'm kidding, It is
Speaker 2: actually a great observation. It is because you know, there's
Speaker 2: the question of consent, right, there's the question of respect.
Speaker 2: Is this disrespectful to the people who actually lived? Did
Speaker 2: they consent to have some toy built to look like
Speaker 2: them dance around when they wanted to be gone? And
Speaker 2: we also know there's the potential for AI psychosis check
Speaker 2: out our episode on that. There's also the ever present
Speaker 2: potential for anything called AI to hallucinate. And don't even
Speaker 2: get us started on that Black Mirror episode about ads
Speaker 2: driven resurrection.
Speaker 4: Well, there was another Black Mirror episode where a woman's
Speaker 4: husband died in a car accident and she used the
Speaker 4: service to basically bring back you know, using collating all
Speaker 4: of his information from online, from the Internet, scraping of
Speaker 4: social media, all of that stuff, and then implanting all
Speaker 4: of that into a body played by oh gosh, Damal
Speaker 4: dummal Gleason. It was and it's one of those things
Speaker 4: where I picture the trope from science fiction and horror
Speaker 4: where it's like, that's not your mother, that's you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, Like you're talking to this thing, but
Speaker 4: that's not that's not your father, that's not your brother,
Speaker 4: and that's not your exactly.
Speaker 3: Oh, good luck, half fun, don't die. I can't recommend
Speaker 3: it enough.
Speaker 2: Go see it now. I enjoyed it. It's it's it's
Speaker 2: worth your time. It's streaming now as well. Uh. The
Speaker 2: the third issue here is what about the legal implications
Speaker 2: is bringing back you know, if I bring back my
Speaker 2: dead biological mother, does that mean she has all her
Speaker 2: sets intact.
Speaker 4: Saying with personhood Just the idea of there's so many
Speaker 4: things that it'll take the laws so long to even
Speaker 4: wrap its head around.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, does Kissinger from Beyond the Grave have
Speaker 2: to stand trial for previous war rhymes? Or can or
Speaker 2: can k be KFBTG just say ah, I'm Kissinger two
Speaker 2: point zero can't get me of too slick.
Speaker 4: How does it likely that I think the argument would
Speaker 4: be made that it's more likely that because it's I
Speaker 4: don't think that anyone would reasonably say it is him.
Speaker 2: It's just as united. Right, Well, that's right. Personhood for convenience.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. I'm just saying, given the inconvenience of
Speaker 4: such a claim, and also the factor is just kind
Speaker 4: of indicating, no, this isn't him. This is just the
Speaker 4: closest thing we can do by scraping all this information
Speaker 4: from history. And how is that any different than just,
Speaker 4: you know, researching the person and making decisions based on
Speaker 4: what the research says they would have done. It's just
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 2: It's just like that. Their argument is that it's different.
Speaker 2: But to that point, noel uh Is it similar to
Speaker 2: that pope who dug up the corpse of another pope
Speaker 2: and put the corpse on trium and it share up? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3: What if Kissinger came back and said, you know, we're
Speaker 3: not supposed to be seduced that way, right, But I am.
Speaker 3: When someone's nice to me, I love that person, even
Speaker 3: if they're bad people. I couldn't care less I'll fight
Speaker 3: to the end for them.
Speaker 4: Where are you reading this from You're scaring me? What?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's a little easter egg Okay, cool? Cool?
Speaker 4: Well happy Easter at there?
Speaker 2: Ah, Yes, happy Easter. Chegged so much to anybody celebrating
Speaker 2: passover as we're recording, there's so much more to get
Speaker 2: to here. It's frankly impossible for us to do it now, folks,
Speaker 2: because the story has yet to be written. Make no mistake,
Speaker 2: and less civilization as you know it falls. This stuff
Speaker 2: is on the way. Here's where we leave it for now.
Speaker 2: Humanity has no idea what the great majority would think
Speaker 2: of this. By the great majority, I mean the dead,
Speaker 2: if the mind soul persist after the body fails. It's
Speaker 2: doubtless that billions of people from the past would like
Speaker 2: to come back. They've got some stuff to say, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. They want to finish their Type
Speaker 2: five or they're Type fifteen. But it's also doubtless that
Speaker 2: billions of people would prefer not to return, And we
Speaker 2: can't really figure out those preferences without a chance to
Speaker 2: speak with them and get their consent or lack thereof directly.
Speaker 2: So at the time of this recording, again Friday, April third,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. No spirit of a deceased person has
Speaker 2: reached out to either this show or the living world
Speaker 2: at large to comment. And perhaps that is because they
Speaker 2: don't exist until we create them, or maybe they're out
Speaker 2: there somewhere and they harbor something they don't want us
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 3: What if we could bring people back and then black
Speaker 3: mirror style put them in a white bear scenario and
Speaker 3: punish them for forevermore.
Speaker 4: Oh, guys, speaking of that, that's a really interesting point, Matt.
Speaker 4: There's a film that I just heard about as like
Speaker 4: an indie that's probably going to be available streaming soon
Speaker 4: called Redus Reducts, where it's about a woman who can
Speaker 4: travel through time in order to kill over and over
Speaker 4: again a person who has wronged her in a horrific way,
Speaker 4: and what that would feel like, and what that would
Speaker 4: do to a person in terms of the addiction of it,
Speaker 4: the intoxication of it, How would you do it when
Speaker 4: presented with that opportunity. It sounds fascinating and the big
Speaker 4: picture folks talked about it and said it felt kind
Speaker 4: of like seeing early you know, Jim Cameron movie and
Speaker 4: seeing the promise of what that you know talent was
Speaker 4: gonna become so I'm really excited to check out redus
Speaker 4: reducts Okay, check out also Mauer mctargets secret mutant power
Speaker 4: from the X Men universe.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to spoil anymore. She's most famously known
Speaker 2: as the lover of Professor X and this has been
Speaker 2: the stuff they don't want you to know. Thank you
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