Sci-fi as a device

It’s amazing how the sci-fi functions as a device to allow us to consider the concept that “this reality that we know isn’t all there is.” But if this were delivered to an audience via religion or philosophy, then people would disregard it. People disregard ideas about afterlifes and reincarnation and ideas about other realities that are present in religion and philosophy. They disregard because it has to do with their identities and beliefs. But the sci-fi devices of a brain in a vat or a computer-created world—these we can experience safely just as stories, without having to involve our philosophies and religions.