Too many things American parents are faced with a paradox: everyone insists that children deserve the best, but in the pursuit of “the best,” adults risk overdoing it. Everything starts from afar. Sitting in the waiting room of an obstetrician-gynecologist, future parents have nothing to do

Too many thoughts We all think too much about too many things. At every single moment, such a vinaigrette of incoherent thoughts and half-formed ideas is created in our consciousness that if we tried to write it all down, one second of our

Imagine that at this very moment, right now, you are not who you think you are. You are the subject of scientific experiments carried out by some evil genius. Your brain has been separated from your body and is kept alive in a jar of nutrients that sits on a table in the laboratory. The nerve endings in your brain are connected to a supercomputer that feeds you the sensations of everyday life. So you think you are living an ordinary life.

Do you exist? And is that you? And what about the world that exists around you (or in your illusion)?

Sounds awful. But can you conclude with absolute certainty that this is not the case? Look, you are already starting to doubt. How to prove that you are not a brain in a vat?
Demon Tricksters

Philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed this version of the brain-in-a-vat as a thought experiment in 1971. But it actually has its roots in the idea of ​​the French philosopher René Descartes, who thought of an evil genius back in 1641.

Thought experiments like this can be scary—and should be—but they still serve a useful purpose. Philosophers turn to them to figure out what beliefs can be trusted and, as a result, what knowledge about the world around us and about ourselves is worth collecting.

Descartes thought that the best way to do this was to begin to doubt everything (de omnibus dubitandum) and build a system of knowledge based on these doubts. Using this skeptical approach, he argued that only a core of absolute certainty would provide a reliable basis for knowledge. He said that in pursuit of truth, a person must doubt all things at least once in his life.

Descartes believed that this philosophical approach was accessible to everyone. In one of his works, he describes a scene where he is sitting in front of the fireplace in his house, smoking a pipe. And he asks if he can believe that he has a pipe in his hand and slippers on his feet. His feelings had failed him in the past, and since they had failed him before, they couldn’t be trusted. Therefore, there is no certainty that his feelings are reliable.
Down the rabbit hole

It was from Descartes that we received the classic skeptical questions so beloved by philosophers, for example: how can we be sure that right now we are not asleep, but awake?

To challenge our fictional knowledge, Descartes imagined the existence of an all-powerful evil demon who tricks us into thinking we are living our lives when the reality is very different from anything we know.

The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment and the problem of skepticism are often used in popular culture. Take “The Matrix” or “Inception,” for example. By watching the filmed version of a thought experiment, the viewer can immerse themselves in a fictional world and gain a good understanding of philosophical ideas.

For example, while watching The Matrix, we learn that the main character Neo discovers that his world is a computer simulation and his body is actually dangling in a vat of life-sustaining fluid. Fortunately, Descartes offers us a lifeline.

Although we cannot be absolutely sure that the world is exactly as it appears, we can be sure that we exist. Because every time we doubt, there must be some “I” that doubts. As a result, Descartes' thoughts lead to the famous expression: “I think, therefore I exist” (cogito ergo sum).

Perhaps you really are a brain-in-a-vat, and the world around you is a computer simulation. But you exist, which means nothing else matters. As long as the world seems real to us, it will be true.

Maxim Vlasov

Confident communication

I have already written about the important role communication plays in a person’s life, and I won’t repeat myself, but it’s probably worth clarifying how important confident communication is. Self-confidence depends on self-esteem, self-love, excessive selfishness and courage. Self-esteem is formed mainly due to your achievements, as well as due to the opinions of others, which influences it to a greater extent. Also, if you are selfish and love yourself very much, then any of your actions and any deed will be considered correct, and therefore, you will be confident in yourself and that you are right. This is of great importance for successful communication; you will never convince your interlocutor of anything if you yourself do not believe in what you are saying. And if you fail to convince your interlocutor of something, then he will convince you that he is right. This can be called a defeat, especially if you are making a deal, agreeing on something, or resolving a serious issue. You and only you can be right, it cannot be otherwise, otherwise there is no point in communication. How to develop self-confidence, how to believe in yourself that you are right?

There are several psychological techniques for doing this, they are as old as time, but they work perfectly. First of all, this is self-hypnosis, if you repeat a hundred times that you are a winner and that you are the best, then you will begin to believe in it and will really win. What will happen if you say this a million times, with emotions, with aggression, with a sense of pride? Of course, this will have a serious psychological impact on you, and many people do just that, they subject themselves to psychological indoctrination. Then comes the assessment of you and your actions by others, which, although to a lesser extent, still depends on you.

It is very important to achieve recognition from others; the more often you are praised, the more often they listen to you, follow your advice, ask you questions, admire you, the higher your confidence in yourself and in what you do. This is why people love to teach others, and if you have noticed this feature, it is the losers who most often do this. They need this to raise their self-esteem, because they have practically zero self-esteem. And at the same time, more successful people are not very eager to mentor others, and do it mainly for money; their self-confidence is fine.

Therefore, if you need self-confidence, if you want to communicate more confidently, then you need to find a person an order of magnitude stupider than you, and rub your beliefs into him so that he will open his mouth. This can also be done with close people, if they respect you and do not fool you at the first opportunity. When a person listens to you and confirms that you are right and admires you, it helps you gain confidence in your words and in yourself naturally.

It’s very good if you have a loved one for whom you are number one in this world and who supports you in everything. Love and admiration gives an incredible amount of energy and self-confidence, so look for a worthy match, because the support of loved ones, parents or a loved one, allows you to survive any other negative impacts on you. The next point is important not only for confident communication with other people, but also for self-confidence in general, so that you do not doubt not only your words, but also your actions.

You need to write down all your successes, keep a diary or something like that, where all your victories, even the most insignificant ones, will be recorded in great detail. This is very, very important, much more important than you can imagine. I have brought people out of the deepest depression in a similar way, helping them keep such a diary. The thing is that, unfortunately, we remember the negative better than the positive; a fly in the ointment can, as they say, spoil the ointment. But your diary will be full only of your successes, you don’t need any failures, but you learn from them, and we learn a lesson from mistakes, but they should not haunt us, taking away our self-confidence. That’s why you should keep such a diary and look at it often, making sure that you can win and can do it constantly. Well, the last thing you need to do in order to be a more confident person and confident in communicating with other people is to train your communication skills.

The devil is not as scary as he is painted, and what scares you, you should do as often as possible, you should look your fear straight in the eye and understand that it does not exist. You are afraid of interviews, so go through them as often as possible, thereby honing your communication skills with the employer and getting used to such communication. Do this whether you are working or looking for work, make it a matter of course for you, and not something you need to decide on. The same is true in communicating with superiors and in communicating with the opposite sex. It doesn’t matter how your conversation ends, with a positive or negative result for you. When what you are so afraid of and what makes you nervous will be commonplace for you, and the understanding that people are nothing more than a means to achieve your goals, your confidence in communicating with others will be at its best. Usually people get upset when they hear the word - no, refusals, disagreement, ridicule, lower their self-confidence, but if you look at other people, like a herd of primates, of which there are a lot, then there is no point in convincing someone of something.

If one person doesn't like you, then go to the next one, and then another and another, until you find someone who will be delighted with you. Even if you are not as convincing as you would like, even if you do not communicate competently, or you are not understood, it does not matter, because people are more likely to perceive the self-confidence of another person who may be talking outright nonsense. Whatever you say, no matter how you do it, be confident in your words, believe in yourself and believe in yourself, remember that you are a winner, and your interlocutor will believe it too.

Confident communication with other people smooths out all your shortcomings; your persuasiveness depends on this confidence that you need to develop in yourself. Then many doors will open before you, because our whole life is built on communication, which is why it must be honed to perfection. Always remember that your every word is a great creation, every time you create something, say something to other people, convince them of something. So do it beautifully, do it confidently, because it is you, and these are your words, and therefore they cannot be wrong, they simply may not be understood or they may not believe you, which means you need to be more convincing and not doubt yourself.