This assumes that “reviving” someone, by somehow recreating activity from a preserved brain that has previously fully ceased all activity, is somehow extending/continuing that past consciousness (thus preventing death), instead of creating a similar but separate one (failing to prevent any death). Essentially, the “teletransportation paradox”, just with different flavoring for why/how a working brain is being “destroyed” and later “recreated”.
The short reply to this is that there are already circumstances where people have brains that have completely ceased all (electrical) activity and we don’t normally consider people who’ve gone through these processes to have been “destroyed” and then “recreated”.
This can happen in both cold-water drowning and in a surgical procedure called deep-hypothermic circulatory arrest. In both circumstances, a person’s body temperature is brought below 20C and their brain completely stops all electrical activity for ~30 min. When later brought out of this state, people retain their memories and sense of personal identity. Nobody typically treats these people as ‘mere copies’ of their previous selves.
Anyway, it’s a reasonable question and not a “non-issue”, but this plus other considerations make it seem not so problematic. Another consideration is the fact that over time you replace essentially all the components of your body through consumption and excretion, so survival can’t be based purely on physical continuity either.
As @Ariel_ZJ wrote, it is already possible for brain activity to fully cease and then restart, and people don’t typically think that they were “destroyed” and “recreated” after that.
With some revival strategies, such as whole brain emulation, some people are concerned about a “copy problem”, because it would not be the same atoms/molecules instantiated, just the same patterns. Personally, I don’t think that the copy problem is an actual concern, for reasons explained here: https://www.brainpreservation.org/content-2/killed-bad-philosophy/
This assumes that “reviving” someone, by somehow recreating activity from a preserved brain that has previously fully ceased all activity, is somehow extending/continuing that past consciousness (thus preventing death), instead of creating a similar but separate one (failing to prevent any death). Essentially, the “teletransportation paradox”, just with different flavoring for why/how a working brain is being “destroyed” and later “recreated”.
Is this considered a non-issue somehow?
The short reply to this is that there are already circumstances where people have brains that have completely ceased all (electrical) activity and we don’t normally consider people who’ve gone through these processes to have been “destroyed” and then “recreated”.
This can happen in both cold-water drowning and in a surgical procedure called deep-hypothermic circulatory arrest. In both circumstances, a person’s body temperature is brought below 20C and their brain completely stops all electrical activity for ~30 min. When later brought out of this state, people retain their memories and sense of personal identity. Nobody typically treats these people as ‘mere copies’ of their previous selves.
Anyway, it’s a reasonable question and not a “non-issue”, but this plus other considerations make it seem not so problematic. Another consideration is the fact that over time you replace essentially all the components of your body through consumption and excretion, so survival can’t be based purely on physical continuity either.
As @Ariel_ZJ wrote, it is already possible for brain activity to fully cease and then restart, and people don’t typically think that they were “destroyed” and “recreated” after that.
With some revival strategies, such as whole brain emulation, some people are concerned about a “copy problem”, because it would not be the same atoms/molecules instantiated, just the same patterns. Personally, I don’t think that the copy problem is an actual concern, for reasons explained here: https://www.brainpreservation.org/content-2/killed-bad-philosophy/
I don’t have a short answer for you unfortunately.
The Quantum Physics Sequence does address this to some extent.