Information-theoretic death

Information-theoretic death is loss of information within a brain to such an extent that recovery of the original person becomes theoretically impossible. Information-theoretic death is an attempt to define death in a way that is permanent and independent of any future medical advances, no matter how distant or improbable. Because detailed reading or restoration of information-storing brain structures is well beyond current technology, it is generally not of practical importance in mainstream medicine, though it is of great importance in cryonics, where consideration of future technology is important.

Ralph Merkle defined information-theoretic death as follows:

A person is dead according to the information theoretic criterion if their memories, personality, hopes, dreams, etc. have been destroyed in the information theoretic sense. If the structures in the brain that encode memory and personality have been so disrupted that it is no longer possible in principle to recover them, then the person is dead. If they are sufficiently intact that inference of the state of memory and personality are feasible in principle, and therefore restoration to an appropriate functional state is likewise feasible in principle, then the person is not dead.

So defined, information-theoretic death has been called "the ultimate definition of irreversible death," and "absolutely irreversible death" in which "destruction of the brain has occurred to such an extreme that any information it may have ever held is irrevocably lost for all eternity."

Information-theoretic death has propagated into some mainstream bioethical, biophilosophical and religious discussions of death, and was mentioned in a 2007 Newsweek article on advances in treating cardiac arrest.

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