“These kinds of arguments show at the same time the limitations to the reach of the human intellect, in that we’re discovering how our little corner of our world may, indeed, just be a small, small, small, small corner of a vastly bigger world that we never imagined, and that we might never, even in principle, be able to reach out and look at the other parts. And at the same time these arguments also emphasize the astounding reach of the human intellect in that we can begin to formulate theories and hypotheses that extend way beyond the world around us that we’ve evolved to cope with – how many lions entered the cave, will it rain later this afternoon, what does that person think of me – these kind of very down to earth uses that our brain evolved, but it turns out that it can be used to grapple with these fundamental questions of existence and the nature of the world.”

— Nick Bostrom, What We Still Don’t Know: “Are We Real?” (Channel 4 series, 2004)