You say that like having an immortal soul, a major part of your mind that can survive literally anything, would make it harder to revive the dead.
Right, for some values of “revive.” If the immortal soul has a mortal connection to the real world, then you can either revive the bodies (but they’re soulless) or you can bring back the soul (but they’re disconnected). The Resurrection Stone in HP canon (as well as possibly that creepy curtain) suggests that the second option is already implemented, but doesn’t establish that it’s the best possible (except in an ‘absence of evidence is evidence of absence’ sort of way).
If people are just computation, then you only have to solve the problem of fixing the hardware and rebooting them, not also realigning their soul.
Sure- but in a world where souls are immortal and connections can be easily be restored, that sort of resurrection would be likely to already exist. Its absence suggests its impossibility.
In a world with immortal souls, Harry’s Patronus goes to find Hermione now. Yes, we can invent reasons why that would fail. Its failure would/will still provide more evidence in the other direction.
You say that like having an immortal soul, a major part of your mind that can survive literally anything, would make it harder to revive the dead.
Right, for some values of “revive.” If the immortal soul has a mortal connection to the real world, then you can either revive the bodies (but they’re soulless) or you can bring back the soul (but they’re disconnected). The Resurrection Stone in HP canon (as well as possibly that creepy curtain) suggests that the second option is already implemented, but doesn’t establish that it’s the best possible (except in an ‘absence of evidence is evidence of absence’ sort of way).
If people are just computation, then you only have to solve the problem of fixing the hardware and rebooting them, not also realigning their soul.
Humans can still be just hardware with a soul. API calls to the cloud.
Sure- but in a world where souls are immortal and connections can be easily be restored, that sort of resurrection would be likely to already exist. Its absence suggests its impossibility.
In a world with immortal souls, Harry’s Patronus goes to find Hermione now. Yes, we can invent reasons why that would fail. Its failure would/will still provide more evidence in the other direction.
That is an experimental test I would very much like to see Harry try.