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One issue is that for asserting ownership of assets, society traditionally prefers a kind of identity broader than a physical individual: if "you" die, then an
by LegionMammal978 3y ago
One issue is that for asserting ownership of assets, society traditionally prefers a kind of identity broader than a physical individual: if "you" die, then an executor should be authorized to access all "your" assets to distribute them. (Imagine having to unlock a bank account with the thumbprint of a corpse!)
The security model is that everyone expecting a share claims it, and if they disagree, then they duke it out in the courts with what evidence they have. And you must hope that no one can compellingly fake your death prematurely. But there's no first-principles solution for absolute security, short of an infallible death register and next-of-kin register.
- d-lisp 3y agoThere must be an historical case where someone had to prove that they are not dead, no ?
- LegionMammal978 3y agoSure, but false positives and false negatives are inevitable, since there's no indicator of death that can't be spoofed or missing. The best you can do is to reduce false positives by requiring very strong evidence of death (and very weak evidence of being alive), or a very long interval of presumed death. In a perfect world, perhaps you could tack on a public insurance fund for wrongfully being considered dead. But in those cases, you get back to the issue of proving identity, since if you've been in a situation where you're presumed dead, you might not have anything left but your body. Also, such situations are rare enough that they'd be dwarfed by more mundane cases of others trying to claim the identities of the dead, so there would be net pressure to make proof-of-liveness more stringent.