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information-theoretic death

information-theoretic death noun: the point at which a person's unique memories and individual personality traits are no longer present in a form that could be read or inferred by future technologies; the complete loss of the information that defines an individual.

Noun

information-theoretic death (usually uncountable, plural information-theoretic deaths)

  1. (usually) The point at which a person's unique memories and individual personality traits are no longer present in a form that could be read or inferred by future technologies; the complete loss of the information that defines an individual.
    • Information-theoretic death occurs several hours following clinical death. Dying is a process, and in the ideal case cryonics intervention procedures begin immediately after the heart stops beating and prior to brain death.2021, Calvin Mercer, Tracy J. Trothen, Religion and the Technological Future: An Introduction to Biohacking, Artificial Intelligence, and Transhumanism, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 147

Forms of information-theoretic death

pluralinformation-theoretic deaths

Origin of information-theoretic death

From information theory + -ic + death, based on clinical death. Coined by American cryptographer and cryonicist Ralph Merkle.

Questions about information-theoretic death

What does information-theoretic death mean?
Information-theoretic death means the point at which a person's unique memories and individual personality traits are no longer present in a form that could be read or inferred by future technologies; the complete loss of the information that defines an individual.
What part of speech is information-theoretic death?
Information-theoretic death is a noun.
What is the plural of information-theoretic death?
The plural of information-theoretic death is information-theoretic deaths.

Words near information-theoretic death in the dictionary

  1. information velocities
  2. information velocity
  3. information warfare
  4. information-security
  5. information-theoretic
  6. information-theoretic death
  7. information-theoretic deaths
  8. information-theoretical
  9. informational
  10. informationalisation
  11. informationalisations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: information-theoretic death (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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