i think the concept of death is extremely poorly defined under most variations of posthuman societies; death as we interpret it today depends on a number of concepts that are very likely to break down or be irrelevant in a post-human-verse
take, for example, the interpretation of death as the permanent end to a continuous distinct identity:
if i create several thousand partially conscious partial clones of myself to complete a task (say, build a rocketship), and then reabsorb and compress their experiences, have those partial clones died? if i lose 99.5% of my physical incarnations and 50% of my processing power to an accident, did any of the individual incarnations die? have i died? what if some other consciousness absorbs them (with or without my, or the clones’, permission or awareness)? what if i become infected with a meme which permanently alters my behavior? my identity?
i think the concept of death is extremely poorly defined under most variations of posthuman societies; death as we interpret it today depends on a number of concepts that are very likely to break down or be irrelevant in a post-human-verse
take, for example, the interpretation of death as the permanent end to a continuous distinct identity:
if i create several thousand partially conscious partial clones of myself to complete a task (say, build a rocketship), and then reabsorb and compress their experiences, have those partial clones died? if i lose 99.5% of my physical incarnations and 50% of my processing power to an accident, did any of the individual incarnations die? have i died? what if some other consciousness absorbs them (with or without my, or the clones’, permission or awareness)? what if i become infected with a meme which permanently alters my behavior? my identity?