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What happens to consciousness the moment you die — Transcript

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0:0010, 9, 8, 7.
0:04You're drowsy, buried under a foggy
0:07mask.
0:08The countdown feels like it was only a
0:11moment ago, but as you struggle to scan
0:14the room, you can see worn-out doctors.
0:16Surgical equipment is getting rolled
0:18away, and the atmosphere is heavier,
0:21more raw.
0:234 hours of your life just happened, and
0:26you weren't in them.
0:28It's tempting to call it sleep, but
0:31sleep is something that you pass
0:32through. Time moves, you dream, you turn
0:36over. Uh a sound from the street can
0:39pull you out of it.
0:41Anesthesia leaves nothing behind. No
0:44dreams or memories. For those 4 hours,
0:48as far as you can perceive,
0:50you didn't exist. But then, at the end
0:53of it,
0:54you came back.
0:56The strange part is that this is
0:58routine. Thousands of times a day in
1:02hospitals across the world, someone
1:04switches a person off, and then [snorts]
1:06switches them back on, and right on
1:09schedule. 180 years of doing this, and
1:13we still can't explain what happens to
1:16you in those 4 hours.
1:19Take the anesthesiologist out of the
1:21room, and you are left with the same
1:23descent into nothingness, only that no
1:26one can bring you back.
1:28We call that dying. For all of human
1:31history, we have been fascinated with
1:33the concept of death.
1:34>> [music]
1:35>> It spawned entire cultures, mythologies,
1:38and religions.
1:39Still, we've never been able to figure
1:42out what happens when we die. But, in
1:45the last decade, medicine, biotech, and
1:48strangely quantum physics
1:51have started pulling answers out of the
1:53dark.
1:54Where does your consciousness go when
1:56you die?
1:58And how do some people come back from
1:59it?
2:01This is the quantum theory of
2:03consciousness after death.
2:11What even is death?
2:13Well, as it turns out, the answer to
2:15that is
2:16changing.
2:18Thousands of years ago, death meant a
2:20permanent state of unconsciousness.
2:24Centuries later, it was more narrowly
2:26defined as what happens when the heart
2:28stops beating.
2:30Well, then we learned how to restart the
2:32heart. So, we moved to a definition of
2:35the [snorts] death of the brain. If
2:37there was no brain activity, well,
2:38surely it meant that a person was dead.
2:42But then we found out that things are
2:45still happening in the brain after that
2:47point, too.
2:49Underneath all of our attempts to define
2:51death, we only ever framed it according
2:54to how far down we could see at the
2:56time.
2:57Today, we can see further down than
2:59ever. So, the definition of death has
3:01moved beyond the failure of just one
3:03individual organ.
3:05It's more like a ladder that slowly
3:07descends, with each step becoming harder
3:10to recover from.
3:13When blood stops moving through your
3:15body, your brain only has about 10
3:17seconds of usable oxygen. That is 10
3:21seconds until the lights are out.
3:24But losing consciousness and being gone
3:27run on two different clocks.
3:30Consciousness can go away in seconds.
3:32The window where you can still be
3:34brought back runs for minutes, and that
3:37gap between the two is the reason that
3:40the rest of this video exists.
3:43Uh but first,
3:45why the 10-second window?
3:47Well, it comes down to how a single
3:50neuron works.
3:51Every neuron holds an electrical charge
3:54across its outer wall, and that charge
3:56is responsible for letting a neuron
3:58fire. But, it it's not just sitting
4:01there on its own. There's a cell holding
4:03it actively at all times, spending
4:06energy every second just to keep it
4:08topped up. Think of it as um
4:10as bailing water out of a boat that
4:13never stops leaking. As long as you can
4:16keep bailing, you are staying afloat. If
4:18you stop for just a few seconds, it
4:20sinks in well, just a few seconds. Not
4:23every neuron bails out at the same rate.
4:25Some are actually hungrier than others,
4:28and the hungrier ones naturally starve
4:30first. And I want you to remember that
4:32because it matters at the bottom of the
4:34ladder.
4:36We know all of this because of a machine
4:38called an EEG, short for
4:41electroencephalogram.
4:42It's a set of electrodes on the scalp
4:45that allows you to read the electrical
4:47rhythm of millions of brain cells all at
4:50once.
4:52With this, you can tell whether the
4:53cells are firing in a coordinated way.
4:56So, it's um
4:58it's more like a question of is this
5:00brain working as intended, as a
5:03detector, and less like a mind-reading
5:05tool. With these devices, we are able to
5:08observe the seven steps that happen in
5:10the time between when the lights go out
5:13and the few minutes when you can be
5:14brought back. And at the bottom of it
5:16all, there's a claim about what happens
5:18next. It came from the combined work of
5:21a Nobel Prize winner and a
5:23world-renowned anesthesiologist, and
5:25it's
5:26not purely theoretical. It's actually
5:29lab tested. Before we take that first
5:31step down, there's something worrying
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5:47Dozens, sometimes hundreds of companies
5:50are quietly collecting your data. Your
5:52name, your location, your browsing
5:54habits, even your search history. Piece
5:57by piece, they assemble it into a
5:59detailed profile of who you are. And
6:02those profiles don't just sit there.
6:05They're sold to the highest bidder to
6:07target you with ads, pull your attention
6:09in directions you didn't choose,
6:12and sometimes even end up in the hands
6:15of bad actors who use that information
6:17to try to scam you. Which is exactly why
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7:19off an annual plan. Now, back to our
7:21story.
7:28Whether it's at the dentist or after
7:29breaking a few bones, you have most
7:32likely been sedated at some point in
7:34your life.
7:35That high that came after taking pills
7:38or an IV was likely from a sedative.
7:42Sedatives are the medicines that make
7:44you relaxed way beyond your default
7:46state of mind. So, you can talk, you can
7:49answer questions, or maybe even crack
7:51jokes.
7:52But, after the fact, you barely remember
7:55what you did while you were sedated. For
7:58most people, their only memory of being
8:00on sedatives is when they see videos or
8:03hear stories from loved ones who were
8:05present.
8:06Which makes you wonder,
8:08if you can't remember any of it,
8:11were you actually conscious through it?
8:13Sedatives are a unique case compared to
8:16anything else on this ladder. They don't
8:18actually switch off your awareness.
8:21After all, it takes some level of
8:23cognitive presence to answer questions
8:26and string sentences together. The real
8:28mystery with sedatives comes down to how
8:30they can switch off your inner recording
8:32of the world.
8:34Some sedatives block the brain from
8:36forming new memories, all while you are
8:38still awake and responsive.
8:41Everything is still working the way it
8:42should, but the experience never gets
8:44recorded. Factually, not remembering
8:48something isn't the same as not
8:50experiencing it. Just like when you get
8:52drunk and wake up on your friend's
8:54couch, it's not like you were possessed
8:56by another entity.
8:58The absence of memory isn't the same as
9:00an absence of experience.
9:08But, does that hold true when anesthesia
9:11is in the picture?
9:13On the outside, it's kind of the same
9:15thing with sedation, but deeper.
9:18But, internally, it's very different
9:20from sedatives.
9:21Anesthesia makes your brain go quiet in
9:23a way that sleep can never match. It is
9:26a gap in time.
9:28That is the only way to describe it from
9:30the inside.
9:31The problem with anesthesia isn't that
9:33we can't see anything, but we can. Put
9:36someone under and the EEG changes
9:38dramatically. The rhythms slow and the
9:41whole regions of the brain stop talking
9:43to each other.
9:45We can watch it happen live on a screen
9:47in every operating theater in the world.
9:50What we can't explain is why any of that
9:53produces nothing.
9:56We can describe the change perfectly and
9:57still have no idea why it deletes
10:01you.
10:02Even stranger is the underlying
10:04chemistry at play.
10:06Anesthetic gases bind to microtubules.
10:09In case you don't know what those are,
10:12microtubules are the internal
10:13scaffolding inside every cell, including
10:16your neurons. They're hollow tubes about
10:1925 nanometers across. They hold the
10:21cells' shape and move things around
10:23inside of it. Now, every time anesthetic
10:26gases bind with these microtubules,
10:29scientists have observed that they
10:30dampen something inside these tubes at a
10:33level much smaller than what we're
10:35familiar with in regular brain
10:37chemistry. Back in 2024, a team at
10:40Wellesley College gave rats a drug that
10:43makes microtubules a lot more stable.
10:46Then, they put the rats under an
10:48anesthetic called isoflurane.
10:51The rats took significantly longer to
10:53lose consciousness. Following this, a
10:56separate mouse study found the same
10:58effect using different compounds.
11:01Implicitly, this points in one
11:03direction. If we strengthen the
11:05scaffolding, anesthetics would have to
11:08work a lot harder to switch you off.
11:10This detail will matter a lot more later
11:13in the video.
11:19Comas are already an extremely [music]
11:22popular phenomenon, especially on the
11:24outside. We've all seen the film
11:26depictions and read the reports about
11:28people [music] who spent months in a
11:30coma.
11:31The headlines all say the same thing,
11:33unresponsive, no reaction to voice or
11:35touch or pain,
11:36but on the inside, well, things get
11:39tricky because right now there is no
11:41definitive answer for what goes on.
11:44And even more disturbing, we know some
11:48people are actually awake in there, but
11:50we can't explain why yet. This
11:53occurrence is what doctors call
11:55cognitive motor dissociation, and on
11:58paper it's defined as a patient who can
12:01hear, understand, and think, but whose
12:04brain cannot send signals to the body.
12:07Currently, 25% or or one in four
12:11unresponsive patients have displayed it.
12:13So, from the bedside they look
12:15completely unresponsive.
12:18On top of that, there is no way to
12:19detect it by a purely visual
12:21observation.
12:23The way doctors work around this
12:24limitation is,
12:26frankly, fascinating. First, they put
12:28the coma patient in a brain scanner.
12:30Then they're asked to imagine playing
12:32tennis. Next, the patient is then asked
12:35to imagine walking through their house.
12:37The two tasks immediately light up
12:40different parts of the brain.
12:42So, the test does something no amount of
12:45watching from the bedside could ever do.
12:48When the regions switch on cue, it means
12:51that someone is in there and they're
12:52listening and following instructions and
12:54still answering, all with the power of
12:57the brain, the
12:58only part of themselves that's still
13:00working. So far, we have only covered
13:02the rungs where the body is still
13:04running.
13:05Everything up until this point has
13:07assumed a heart beat.
13:15This one rests on an assumption we held
13:17for many years until advancements in
13:19medicine proved otherwise.
13:21On the outside, the verdict seems
13:23certain. It's clinical death, that's it.
13:26A condition where the heart stops and
13:28breathing stops. Until the middle of the
13:30last century, there was no preface. It
13:32was just called death, full stop, end of
13:34sentence. On the inside, this is where
13:37those 10 seconds get spent. The lights
13:39go out almost immediately.
13:41Here's how we come back from that.
13:44CPR.
13:45It's the thing you learn to the beat of
13:47Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees. And it's
13:49a complete game changer in first aid.
13:51Chest compressions and defibrillation
13:54made this step of the ladder survivable.
13:56Thanks to CPR,
13:58clinical death stopped being a line that
14:01we cross, and it actually became a
14:03reversible process. If we can now bring
14:06people back from what we call death,
14:09then it means that for the first time in
14:11history, there are people who can tell
14:14us what it was like to be dead, even if
14:17only temporarily.
14:24Everyone assumes a dying brain fades
14:27out. That's why it's often depicted as a
14:29slow descent where everything grows cold
14:32and dark, and you slowly let go of your
14:35grasp on life.
14:37Until eventually, it all goes quiet.
14:40It's a reasonable assumption, but it's
14:42also wrong. In 2013, scientists
14:45Borgigin, Wang, and Mashour tested
14:47something new, again, with rats.
14:50After cardiac arrest, the rat brain
14:53produced a notable surge of gamma
14:55activity within the first 30 seconds.
14:59It was a highly [snorts] coherent result
15:01that kept happening immediately before
15:04the EEG reading finally went flat.
15:07Gamma waves are the brain's fastest
15:09rhythm. We experience about 40 cycles in
15:12a second.
15:13They are also associated with the
15:15coordinated processing that happens
15:17[music] when we experience alert,
15:18conscious thoughts. Couple that with the
15:21coherent results of that surge and this
15:23study from 2013 showed that the rats
15:26brain activity read in a similar manner
15:29to what we experience while conscious,
15:31but rats are rats. The question was
15:34whether it happens in us.
15:37So, in the same lab in 2023,
15:40four comatose patients were removed from
15:43their ventilators with consent from
15:45their families.
15:47Two of the patients produced what was
15:48described as {quote} organized gamma
15:52surges
15:53with much of the activity clustered in
15:55the temporoparietal junction,
15:57a region of the brain that pulls
15:58together sight, sound, touch, and
16:01balance to create a sense of where your
16:03body is in space.
16:06Even weirder, it's also the area
16:08associated with out-of-body experiences.
16:12And the surges effects didn't end there
16:15because Sam Parnia and his team ran a
16:17study called AWARE II tracking 567
16:21in-hospital cardiac arrests.
16:24But this time, they interviewed the
16:26survivors to get some real answers.
16:29The feedback was significantly skewed
16:32towards an unexpected result.
16:35Of the survivors they were able to
16:37interview, around 39%
16:39reported memories or perceptions that
16:41suggested they were aware in some way
16:45while being pronounced clinically dead.
16:48Upon learning this, it is tempting to
16:50call this [music] the brain's last
16:52firework,
16:53but that's not remotely true. Fireworks
16:56are chaotic, disordered, and designed to
16:59fade away after just a few seconds.
17:01What they found is the opposite.
17:04The signal here is more organized,
17:06connected, and more coordinated than the
17:09ordinary act [music] of waking up.
17:11Whatever is happening, it isn't the
17:13consequence of a system falling into
17:15disorder. With all that we've so far,
17:18there are still some lingering
17:20questions. For one, there's gamma. Gamma
17:22activity is mainly a correlate of
17:25consciousness, not proof of
17:26consciousness.
17:28In other words, because there's usually
17:30gamma activity during consciousness, we
17:32are led to believe that the readings
17:34mean a patient is experiencing something
17:36akin [music] to consciousness.
17:39Which brings in the next concern, the
17:41limited proof.
17:43In the 2023 study, only two out of four
17:46patients had the gamma-related results.
17:49And on top of that, none of the four
17:51survived.
17:52So, nobody can directly ask them what it
17:56was like.
17:57On the first rung of this ladder, we
17:58said that the absence of memory is not
18:01the absence of experience. But at the
18:03fifth rung, what we have is a worse, the
18:06full signature of an experience
18:09with nobody around to confirm it.
18:17This is the moment everyone recognizes.
18:21The flatline and the single extended
18:24beep. In every hospital drama ever made,
18:28this is where the doctor stops working,
18:30puts down his stethoscope, and somebody
18:32calls the time.
18:33When there's a flatline, there's no
18:35rhythm left on the EEG.
18:37Nothing.
18:39For most of the 20th century, this was
18:41the definition of death. Ask a doctor in
18:441970 what death is, and this is what
18:47they would point at. But today,
18:49it's rung six of seven, because there is
18:52something that happens after the
18:53silence.
18:59Terminal spreading depolarization.
19:03A slow wave of collapse moving across
19:06the surface of the brain after an EEG
19:09has gone silent.
19:10It begins in the deeper cortical layers
19:13of your brain and the hungriest cells
19:15with the highest energy demands.
19:18Those cells [music] starve first.
19:21Then it spreads outwards moving across
19:23the cortex region by region.
19:26Every cell loses the voltage it spent a
19:28lifetime holding on to.
19:31And nobody has ever described what it's
19:33like because nobody has ever come back
19:35from this level to tell us.
19:37Although thanks to advancements in
19:39scientific research, we are starting to
19:41get some pieces of the puzzle.
19:48Enter Stuart Hameroff, an
19:50anesthesiologist by profession.
19:52He spent his entire career in switching
19:54[music] consciousness off for a living
19:56and then at some point he began to
19:59wonder where it went.
20:01Here's what bothered him.
20:03We can tell you which receptors
20:04anesthetic drugs bind to. What we can't
20:07explain is why that produces nothing.
20:12Chemistry can explain sedation,
20:14confusion, drowsiness, even a dull
20:16response, but it has never explained the
20:19gap. So he went looking for answers in a
20:22completely different field.
20:24Quantum physics. [music] In quantum
20:26physics, a very small system can hold
20:29several possible states at once instead
20:31of settling into just one.
20:33When it does settle though, physicists
20:35call that a collapse. So picture it like
20:38this. You're in a dark room and under a
20:41spotlight is a spinning coin on a table.
20:43While it's spinning, it isn't heads or
20:45tails. It's a blur of both
20:47possibilities. It's a perfect mixture of
20:49all possible outcomes.
20:52But the moment you touch the coin and
20:54take a hard look, it slams down flat on
20:57one outcome. Just heads or tails. It's
21:00final and it's definite. That sudden
21:02shift from maybe to is
21:06that is the collapse.
21:08Roger Penrose, the mathematical
21:10physicist who won the Nobel Prize in
21:122020, had arrived at the same territory
21:15from the opposite direction, not from
21:17operating in medical theaters, but from
21:20the mathematics of how quantum states
21:22settle in the first place.
21:25Today, we call it Orch OR.
21:27And here's how it changes our view of
21:29the latter. First is the OR part from
21:32Penrose.
21:33Objective reduction.
21:36It's the idea that collapse happens on
21:38its own when triggered by gravity,
21:40rather than because someone measured it.
21:42So, the more mass something has, the
21:45faster [music] a collapse happens.
21:47Meanwhile, Hameroff discovered the Orch
21:50or orchestrated part of Orch OR. He
21:53argued that microtubules inside neurons
21:56are structured enough to organize these
21:59collapses instead of letting them happen
22:01randomly.
22:02Combined, their argument is that
22:05consciousness isn't something the brain
22:07is producing. Rather,
22:09it's derived from orchestrated
22:11collapses, a process that begins at a
22:14level underneath chemistry.
22:16Hameroff argues that when the heart
22:18stops and the microtubules lose their
22:20quantum state, the information held in
22:22them isn't destroyed. Instead, it
22:25disperses out into the universe. But, if
22:28a patient is revived, it can return to
22:30the body. On that note, he goes on to
22:32suggest that we ought to define such
22:34moments as near-death experiences.
22:37However, if the patient isn't revived,
22:41the information in their microtubules
22:43may persist outside of the body
22:45indefinitely.
22:47In such cases, he identifies it as a
22:50soul.
22:51Hameroff's claim has been through 20
22:53years of serious scrutiny, and for most
22:55of that time, the objection was winning.
22:58For the doubters, the first objection is
23:00decoherence, an understanding that
23:02quantum behavior is fragile. As a
23:05result, any contact with a warm, noisy
23:08environment destroys it almost
23:09instantly.
23:11The brain is the exact kind of
23:12environment that promotes decoherence.
23:14It's warm, it's wet, and it's
23:16electrically loud. It's just about the
23:18worst place imaginable for quantum
23:20behavior.
23:22Given these facts, the standard rebuttal
23:24against Or go are claims that quantum
23:27states in a brain should last for
23:28femtoseconds. That is trillions of a
23:31second. Far too short a window to matter
23:34for
23:35well, anything.
23:36For a long time, that rebuttal was
23:38considered the end of the Or go are
23:40argument.
23:42But three findings have complicated it.
23:46Babcock, Kurian, et al. found that
23:49networks of tryptophan inside
23:50microtubules can produce something
23:52called super radiance at body
23:55temperature.
23:56Picture a stadium of people clapping all
23:58at random. It's just noise.
24:01Now, picture that same crowd clapping in
24:04perfect sync.
24:06It doesn't sound the same as before.
24:07Yet, it is the same people with the same
24:09energy.
24:11You create synchronization, and it's a
24:13completely different phenomenon.
24:15In sync, it's one sound, far louder and
24:18behaving as a single cohesive unit.
24:21Molecules are able to do that with light
24:23instead of sound. A crowd syncs because
24:25everyone can hear everyone.
24:28But at the molecular scale inside the
24:30hot, jostling chaos of a cell, nothing
24:32should be able to coordinate with
24:34anything else. There is no
24:36hearing at that distance.
24:39And yet,
24:40the effect didn't fade. It only got
24:42stronger as the microtubules got larger,
24:45the exact opposite of what decoherence
24:48from the doubters predicts.
24:50And then came the supporting evidence.
24:52Kalra, a researcher along with his
24:54colleagues, found that anesthetics
24:56shorten quantum optical effects in
24:59proportion to their clinical strength.
25:02Here's what that means.
25:03Remember the scaffolding that we
25:04mentioned all the way back at rung
25:06number two?
25:07At rung two, stabilizing the scaffolding
25:10made anesthetics work harder.
25:12Calera's group came at it from the other
25:14end.
25:15They measured the quantum optical
25:17effects inside microtubules directly,
25:19then dosed them with anesthetics. And
25:22the stronger the anesthetic, the further
25:24those effects dropped. Two different
25:28experiments, same structure at the
25:30center of both.
25:32Then in 2024, Liu, Chen, and Ao
25:34published a model in the journal
25:36Physical Review E.
25:38This group treated the myelin sheath, a
25:40protective fatty layer in the brain's
25:42nerve fibers, as a cavity that could
25:45generate entangled photon pairs.
25:47It's a model rather than an experiment,
25:50but the idea is that this fatty coating
25:52in your brain might actually be a
25:54natural factory for producing linked
25:57pairs of photons. It's a separate idea
26:00from superradiance, but it does point in
26:02the same direction.
26:04Quantum effects turning up in warm
26:06biological tissue where nobody expected
26:08to find them. There's one thing that has
26:11to be said about this, though.
26:13All of this comes from laboratory
26:14preparations, isolated proteins,
26:17controlled conditions, and careful
26:19equipment.
26:21Nobody has demonstrated any of it inside
26:24a living brain.
26:27Most theories of consciousness cannot be
26:29tested.
26:30But this next one made an unexpected
26:33mistake. It made a prediction. If
26:37gravity is constantly collapsing quantum
26:39states like Penrose proposed,
26:42then that means it's constantly moving
26:44particles around. These moved and
26:46charged particles emit radiation. So,
26:49according to Penrose's predictions,
26:52every piece of ordinary matter in the
26:54universe should be leaking a faint
26:56trickle of x-rays, not just in an
26:59experiment, but
27:00everywhere, including the chair you're
27:02sitting on. This is known as the DOC
27:05Penrose model.
27:06And the implication from this model was
27:08simple.
27:09If these x-rays are found to be visible
27:11under similar conditions to the brain,
27:14then Penrose's objective reduction in
27:16Orch OR has a valid basis to it. As it
27:20turns out, you can go looking for these
27:23x-rays, but you need to find somewhere
27:25quiet enough.
27:26So, 1,400 m under a mountain in central
27:30Italy, there's a structure called the
27:31Gran Sasso National Laboratory. And it's
27:34only reachable through the use of a
27:35motorway tunnel. Conveniently enough,
27:37it's also a place that suits the test
27:39for Penrose's predictions.
27:42The rock at this laboratory blocks the
27:44constant rain of particles from space
27:46that would drown signals at the surface.
27:49Down here in the dark, physicists
27:52shielded a germanium crystal and then
27:54watched it. Their reasoning was pretty
27:56simple.
27:57They were looking for a microscopic
27:59gravity-driven snap of radiation.
28:03The exact mathematical signature that
28:05physicist Roger Penrose claimed gives
28:07rise to conscious moments.
28:10They sought out to find the faintest
28:12possible confirmation
28:14that the soul might be a physics
28:17problem. They found nothing. Tananati
28:20and colleagues published in Nature
28:22Physics in 2021.
28:24This version of the DOC Penrose model
28:26was ruled out. That's the cleanest form
28:29of the theory, the one with no
28:30adjustable settings that can be quietly
28:32tuned to fit whatever the data shows.
28:35A follow-up assessment insisted that
28:38Orch OR is highly implausible on the
28:40simplest gravity-related collapse
28:42mechanism. Just like that, one of the
28:45oldest questions about consciousness
28:47found a tested answer in a crystal under
28:50a mountain
28:51and nothing happened.
28:54While the findings under the rock were
28:55true, Penrose isn't completely
28:58invalidated. When you check his initial
29:00work, his formulation never used the
29:03same steps this test uses. Therefore,
29:06even in 2026, there are teams building
29:08refined collapse models to specifically
29:10test out Penrose's theory.
29:13Meanwhile, other teams exist to test the
29:15many quantum consciousness theories.
29:17Before we close this chapter on Orch OR,
29:19there is one more detail, and it's easy
29:22to miss. In the very chapter of his
29:24research where Hameroff lays out the
29:26quantum soul hypothesis, he notes that
29:30Penrose doesn't necessarily endorse
29:32proposals of this kind. The physicist
29:34whose name is on the theory, the Nobel
29:37laureate who built the collapse
29:38mechanism the entire thing rests on.
29:41It turns out that he declined to cosign
29:44the part about the afterlife. The
29:46concerning thing here isn't that the
29:47theory might be wrong. It's that the man
29:50who built the physics underneath it
29:52looked at where it led
29:54and then stopped walking.
29:56Back in school, you were taught that
29:58energy can't be created or destroyed.
30:01But, there is a different, less popular
30:03rule that we rarely discuss.
30:06Information can't be destroyed, either.
30:09In physics, information means the
30:10complete physical state of a thing. So,
30:13that includes where every particle is,
30:15how it's moving, how it correlates with
30:18everything around it. It doesn't mean
30:20memories, and it doesn't mean
30:22personality. It just means the
30:24arrangement. And you can scramble it all
30:27you like. You can't delete it.
30:30When information is lost from a system
30:32through decoherence, it doesn't vanish.
30:35It just moves into the environment. This
30:37is known as the no hiding theorem. This
30:40is the driving principle behind the
30:42black hole information paradox.
30:45And here's what upsets physicists.
30:47Nobody is troubled by black holes
30:50destroying matter. We're already
30:52familiar with matter getting destroyed
30:54constantly.
30:56Instead, they are troubled by black
30:58holes possibly destroying information
31:01because as far as we can tell,
31:03the universe shouldn't permit it.
31:06So, here's what exactly exists below the
31:08ladder. The specific configuration that
31:11was you. Every state, every correlation,
31:13the exact arrangement. None of it
31:16is erased when you die.
31:18It's all dispersed.
31:20In the strictest technical sense, it is
31:22still present.
31:24And that sounds exactly like what
31:26Hameroff said.
31:28But, it isn't. He described something
31:30that stays organized, a coherent set of
31:33information that is still in some sense
31:36your consciousness, and that it can find
31:38its way back into a body. This promises
31:40none of that.
31:42What survives is arrangement without
31:44structure.
31:45Scattered into everything you ever
31:47touched. No pattern, no experience, no
31:50route back. Preserved doesn't mean
31:53retrievable.
31:54When you stir milk into coffee, every
31:56molecule of milk is still in that cup.
31:59None of it was destroyed and nothing was
32:00lost. But, you can't get that milk back.
32:04Not with better equipment or with time
32:06to recover it. And yet, you can taste
32:08the milk. It's still there in a way that
32:11registers, in a way that can be
32:12detected. Compared to the milk, there is
32:15no vantage point in the universe from
32:17which the dispersed version of you
32:21registers as anything at all.
32:24Recovering all parts of you would mean
32:26reading the entire environment you
32:28dissolved into in perfect detail, then
32:30running every interaction backwards.
32:33Nothing inside this universe can do
32:35that. You are preserved and unreadable
32:38at the same time.
32:39An immortality that's no different from
32:41annihilation. Speaking of immortality,
32:44watch this video next where we talk
32:46about the quantum theory of immortality
32:48that predicts that you might just live
32:50forever.

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