Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.

Even today no computer can understand language as well as a three-year-old or see as well as a mouse.

The brain abhors discrepancies.

One of the first things we teach medical students is to listen to the patient by taking a careful medical history. Ninety percent of the time, you can arrive at an uncannily accurate diagnosis by paying close attention, using physical examination and sophisticated lab test to confirm your hunch (and to increase the bill to the insurance company).

Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.

If we knew about the real facts and statistics of mortality, we’d be terrified.

Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity.