When we die what becomes of our intangible memories & experiences?

[querilous]

We are taught that in nature, nothing is wasted. Confining ourselves to human beings, when we die our physical bodies get recycled. What becomes of our non-physical memories and experiences?

 

[BiGyElLoWhAt]

Nothing gets wasted in a computer, either. What happens to a computer's "intangible" memories and experiences? I'm not so sure a physics site is the place to talk philosophy. And that's what this question is, since no one can really knows how to model our memories or experiences, except perhaps as arbitrary electrical signals and chemical states. Maybe this is a neurology question. Why do you say "non-physical" memories and experiences?

 

[phinds]

As far as I know, they evaporate as tiny electrical discharges as soon as our brain stops functioning, which is not too long after death. I may be wrong about the details, but I see no reason to expect that they could exist once the brain is dead.

Not EVERYTHING is conserved/preserved. If you take a pile of matchsticks and form them into a geometric shape and then pick them up and put them back in the box, in what sense do you think that geometric shape would be preserved?

 

[oflittleuse]

Where are they going now?? Memory? What memory? );

 

[Doug Huffman]

Leonard Susskind defines conservation of information as the Minus First Law of Physics, I think in his The Black Hole War, that leads to the holographic principle.

 

[symbolipoint]

Nothing gets wasted in a computer, either. What happens to a computer's "intangible" memories and experiences? I'm not so sure a physics site is the place to talk philosophy. And that's what this question is, since no one can really knows how to model our memories or experiences, except perhaps as arbitrary electrical signals and chemical states. Maybe this is a neurology question. Why do you say "non-physical" memories and experiences?

You do suggest an answer. What happens to the memories and experience of a dead computer? In some cases, developed software published or distributed; and continuing experience of the former users of the computer now dead. Similar for a living and then no longer living person. SIMILAR, but not necessarily identical. A person shared, taught, created, and other people may be influenced from the works of the now dead person...

 

[Evo]

Since there is no answer, this is purely speculation, closed.