“One well known idiom of philosophy is “possible worlds.” It is natural to wonder why the world is as it is. Why is there evil? That we even ask that question demonstrates that we can imagine a world without evil, a world much different from the one that exists. There is reason to believe that the ability to conceive of possible worlds is a fundamental part of human intelligence. All the thousands of choices we make in our lives, momentous and trivial, are acts of imagination. You imagine the world in which you get your car washed this afternoon and the world in which you don’t, and decide which you would rather live in.”
William Poundstone
