Well, to be honest, it's probably just a rhetorical question at best.  If current neuroscience is essentially on the right track as far as how the brain works, resurrecting the dead will always be impossible in any meaningful way.

I know nobody likes to think of it that way, but basically, once the neural networks shut down at death, the information they contained is irrevocably lost.  If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.  Regardless of exactly how memories are stored, for instance, they are most certainly dependent on the brain being exactly how it is at any given moment.  If you change a person's brain in any way, you change "who they are."  Can you even begin to imagine the task of trying to "recalibrate" a hundred billion neurons?

In other words, even if we learn how to make a dead brain work again, (which is extremely implausible) the "resurrected" person wouldn't be the same person at all.

Of course it was thought to be a rethorical/philosphical question.

If I would know how to undo tremendous brain damage I wouldn't be posting on this forum but instead writing my acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize of medicine.

But if you could store how a brain was exactly short before death, it can't be absolutlely impossible to rebuild it again. Perhaps the theists would question whether this would still be the same person that died before.

but if you have problems imagining the resurrection of a person you might just give your ideas on eternal youth

Humans do many clever things, like build nuclear weapons.  But they rarely do wise things,like not build nuclear weapons.  In this grossly overpopulated,resource depleated, and poluted world it would not be wise to create immortals.  But if it can be done it probably will.

If we ever 'conquer death', we will have to deal with the problems of lack of diversity, lack of innovation, over-population, accumulation/redistribution of wealth, and many more.

I see death as a necessary thing. By this I mean death in an abstract way: destruction, chaos, natural selection.

If no one dies, the only way to avoid over-population is to ensure that no one reproduces. If no one reproduces, there will no longer be any youth. As people/minds get old, they become entrenched in their ways. It takes a fresh perspective to introduce innovation. Kuhn's paradigm shifts are carried out by the mere fact that the younger generation simply waits until the older generation dies off.

If no one reproduces, there's no more evolution. No more evolution means no more diversity. What is to stop another society which does not embrace immortality from evolving to a point that they overtake us either biologically or culturally? It seems to me that naive immortality would lead to stagnation and eventual death through obsolescence.

If no one dies, and the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, then our culture will stagnate into a rigid hierarchy which cannot change. What's to stop the poor and oppressed from trying to break down the society through revolution rather than less violent means?

Death is only bad if you're the one dying. Death allows resources to be reorganized and redistributed into potentially better and more innovative processes. It allows the obsolete to be recycled and gives an opportunity for new and fresh ideas to flourish.

If we were to ever conquer biological death, we would need to ensure a way that some other kind of 'death', such as cultural renewal, could take its place. The danger is stangnation and obsolescence.

A society without death is quite an interesting idea, because such a society would need to be a very different society from the one we know today.

I wrote about eternal youth for a good reason and not just about eternal life.

(from the Grim Reapers memoirs )

That such a society has to limit reproduction to a point near to zero is what comes into mind first. But I think, that after 200 years without natural death, that such a society would have to get a new perspective on suicide. I tend to think that after people lived for 200 and more years that life would get so boring to them that they would want to end it themselves.

OK, my previous speculation notwithstanding, I get the impression that you want to explore the meaning of being an individual. So let me posit a machine that can make an exact duplicate of you. The first objection to that comes from quantum mechanics. You really cannot duplicate information like that. The second objection is that such a machine would be useless as medical treatment because the copy would not live any longer than the original.

But as a rhetorical question, we can set all of that aside and just say that the machine exists. What are the consequences of such a machine?

So you have yourself duplicated. Now the question becomes which you is you? Let's say, just for grins, that the machine takes like half an hour to build the copy. So you step into it, get scanned and step out. Now you go into the waiting room until the copy is ready. Not so fast!

So you step into the machine, get scanned and step out. Only to find another you who is ten pages ahead of you in the book that you have been reading. Now do you see where this is getting interesting?

I suppose that the theists would have a huge fuss over the idea that a machine cannot make a new soul. Well, I am happy for them. But what if the copy murders the original? If we hold to the position of the theists that our laws are based on our religion, can the soulless copy be charged with murder? If we take the counter argument that the soul and the religious principals are not relevant, then just whom was murdered and who was the murderer?

I wrote:

<snip>

Well, I don't really think so.  However, people might well start taking more risks.  It's never going to be possible to eliminate all death; after a few hundred years, people might start doing much, much riskier things in order to advance their beliefs or interests, with death as a risk they accept.