Hell, yes!

Alexander80 - 07 July 2012 03:47 PM

My own opinion is: Yes if we can bring back Cavemen, and those sacrificed, or killed for stupid beliefs we should do it, but what should we do if some crazy guy brings back People like Stalin, Mao, Genghis Khan, (Hitler is no option cause he is completely gone) some ancient tyrant?
What should happen to Stalin if he goes on a shopping trip to Moscow, or to Francisco Franco if he is spotted in a Cafe in Barcelona?
Should they be put to trial and sent to prison?

Pfft, such a pessimist! :^P Look on the bright side: we could bring the greatest minds that ever lived. Feynman and Einstein and Marie Curie working with quantum computers; Bismarck and Theodore Roosevelt maintaining the worldwide balance of power and making wars obsolete; Austen, Keats, Heinlein and Hemingway creating the masterpieces they never had the time for; Da Vinci and Tesla (f*** Edison) coming up with technology we can’t even begin to imagine… And just think of interviewing all the less famous revivals - we’d be able to solve every mystery there ever was, fill in all the blanks and teach history the way it really happened. (Lost colony of Roanoke, anyone?)

Sure, the transition from one era to another would be quite a shock, but if it were set up as a gradual process, it might be doable. Has anybody else here read the Transmetropolitan comics? They have an issue dedicated to this exact dilemma: cryogenically frozen people from the 20th and 21st centuries get revived sometime in the 24th century but nobody cares about them; most of them go insane after they step out of the revival facility and see how different the world has become. :^/

I didnt say we shouldnt do it, i would like to see that very much, but what would happen if someone brings back Gengish

Actually we all have atoms from Genghis and everyone else on this planet. My problem is with “entanglement”. What happens to the atoms and particles in our own body when we make an exact duplicate of the original with all the atoms and particles intact? Would a bunch of people just go poof and disappear?
That would make a great scifi story…

Do you mean what happens if we would be able to make an exact copy of a person with, for example, nanomachines?
I think if we could scan a living being atom per atom, send this information to an army of nanomachines which would build a copy, then we simply would have two identical people, like in that star trek episode where commander Riker gets duplicated.

Wow I think this thread took a wrong turn someplace. The OP wasn’t really focusing on technology and bringing back the dead.  He was focusing on the ETHICS (hence the title of the thread) of doing so.  That I think is a great question. I recently went to a museum that was exhibiting mummies. On first blush you think, wow this is so cool. Looking at their exposed skeletons, at xrays scientists did etc. was very educational.  But on second blush I thought “What right do scientists, i.e. us moderns, have to disrupt their burial plots, pull apart their clothing, personal trinkets, etc.”  Yes they’re dead. Yes there is no heaven and really no “them” there. But something just struck me as arrogant and not right.  What would you think if you just buried a relative, and as soon as you left the cemetary some scientist dug up the body for medical research? Like I said, good question form the OP.

I understand your question and the intrinsic value (dignity) of a corpse or fossil. But consider this, every time you place shovel to the ground you disturb millions of atoms hat were once part of living organisms. 
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. One of the truisms in scripture.