Philip Nova is a software engineer at Google and has worked on applications in biotechnology and education technology. He holds a PhD in biomedical science from the University of California, San Francisco, focused on neural mechanisms of memory in Alzheimer’s disease. He lives in San Francisco, California.
What happens when we die? Unless we accept a religious explanation, the only remaining possibility seems to be the annihilation of consciousness. But another possibility is consistent with evidence from neuroscience. Our brains easily form predictive models of the behavior of close friends and loved ones, which emulate these other selves much as advanced computers can emulate other electronic devices. Whether these emulations are conscious is an open question, but there is preliminary evidence from several sources that the brain can host multiple independent spheres of consciousness. This opens up the possibility of survival through the medium of other brains.