Information. Everything is information organizing itself into structure.

[The Lone Liberal]

Complexity. Is there anyone else that is fascinated with the subject. I keep waiting for the final theory that will explain everything. The string upon which the universe hangs.

[brainshrub]

1. Here is the final theory:

42.

Your welcome

[Jim Sagle]

2. If 42 is the answer, the question must be: "How many elected Presidents

has America had?

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. If you are interested in complexity theory...

...may I suggest that you read this link?

A final theory that explains everything? The universe is capricious.

http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/cc.html

[brainshrub]

4. The Time Cube is the answer you are looking for:

http://www.timecube.com/

This website is the clearest & most concise explanation for learning about complexity and a unified theory.

Enjoy.

[cryofan]

5. Here is something that may be very important to you

Whatever it is that you are -- as a person -- is information, as encoded into the structure of your brain.

History and logic shows us that information formerly lost is being increasingly recovered at lower and lower levels. In other words, the baseline of noise is being steadily lowered. Information previously deemed lost is being recovered. THis process is inexorable. Where does the recovery of previously lost information end? At what point is information lost forever?

At some point in time, will all information be recoverable? Now, that point seems unlikely to ever occur. However, what implications does this always lowering noise baseline have for us, and for the information that is stored in your brain?

It would seem reasonable to assume that with some degree of preservation of your brain upon death, a certain amount of that information may be recovered at some point in the distant future. And when that happens, if enough information is recovered, you could be said to live again, to be revived, and in a future that might promise virtual immortality.

[The Lone Liberal]

6. Then we will be faced with the conundrum

of the astronaut on mars.

[cryofan]

7. The government!

Potato salad!

[cryofan]

12. huh?

[Pinko Commie]

8. Hmm

I've had something like this thought before, only in a little different form.

A few years ago, someone found that sounds could be recovered from wooden surfaces in a room, kinda like the fossil record. The technology doesn't exist yet, but it would be possible to recover whatever Nixon said in the Oval (or maybe a little somethin' of Monica).

Would this be true of video, too? Or human intelligence?

Be good. Maybe there is a ressurection.

[cryofan]

10. Neuroarchaeology

That term "neuroarchaeology" pretty much says it all. If you could get your "brain information" to a sufficiently advanced civilization without undergoing too great a degradation, voila--resurrection. The problem is that the brain begins to degrade soon after death. The cells of the brain are highly suspectible to a form of "eating themselves alive" known as "apoptosis".

Apoptosis occurs when a cell is starved of oxygen (like when you die and stop breathing/pumping blood to your brain cells (called "ischemia")). After 24 hours of ischemia at room temps, apoptosis has rendered your brain to a state of near-liquidity--a soupy, featureless mess. IOW, a day or so after you "die", your brain information has completely been obliterated. If, that is, your brain is just kept at room temps.

To restate, once apoptosis has its way with your brain, even if you could get your brain to some super civilization 1000 years from now, even they could not use neuroarchaeological techniques to resurrect you--there would be nothing left for them to work on; no information from the brain structure is preserved for them to work on.

However, HOWEVER, if, IF, you could lower the temp of your brain soon after you die, apoptosis would slow down very much, and you would have several days, or even more time, before apoptosis reduces your brain information to a soupy consistency. However, after a few days/weeks/months, even if you can hold apoptosis at bay by lowering temperature, other processes begin to degrade the brain structure. These other processes are known essentially as "rot".

So, what to do? You can reduce temps to say, 35 degrees F in order to stop apoptosis, but after a couple of weeks, the brain starts to rot anyway, eventually causing loss of all brain information.

So the problem that presents itself now is, now that you have staved off apoptosis, what longterm solution stops rot? The answer is cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen, after a suitable washout with a suitable cryopreservative (antifreeze). The cryopreservative stops the formation of ice crystals which could severely disrupt the brain structure, thus potentially causing loss of brain information.

So, you cryopreserve the brain, and store it in liquid nitrogen gas (LN2). Storage in LN2 lowers the brain temperature to about minus 400 degrees F.

Once the brain is in LN2, and is at approximately -400F, all chemical processes virtually stop. The brain then remains virtually the same, preserving the information for 10,000 years or more. 10,000 years is plenty of time for that super-civilization to develop, one which has developed advanced techniques of neuroarchaeology. They pull your brain out of the LN2, study your brain, recover the information, and, voila, you are alive again, with your brain stashed suitably in an advanced SuperBody which gives you virtual immortality. Nice work if you can get it, etc.

----------
QED.

[drhilarius]

9. Entropy is the key...

...all of human action, the processes of the universe, are merely hedges against entropy. The media, the internet, academics, pundits, all function collectively as Maxwell's demon, sorting molecules of information in an attempt to curtail heat death. Information that is lost, one could say, is like heat loss from a closed system. Unlike heat loss in a closed system, which would make the closed system more entropic, the fact that we can recover info, suggests that the entropy of human systems will always be low.
There will never be a GUT of everything, because human beings are the x factor. We can predict human behavior with a high degree of probability, but never with mathematical certainty.

[cryofan]

11. However, the laws of thermodynamics may not apply the same to ....

....an open system universe. If the universe is indeed infinite, then the application of the laws of thermodynamics are not be the same. Thus, eternal life may be possible in an open system, infinite universe.