Too Many Things American parents are faced with a paradox: Everybody says that kids deserve the best, but adults run the risk of overdoing in pursuit of the “best”. It all starts from afar. Sitting in the waiting room of an obstetrician-gynecologist, future parents have nothing to do

Too Much Thinking We all think too much of a lot of things. At every single moment, such a vinaigrette of incoherent thoughts and half-formed ideas is created in our minds that if we tried to write all this 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 conducted by some evil genius. Your brain is separated from your body and kept alive in a can of nutrients that sits on the table in the laboratory. Nerve endings in your brain are connected to a supercomputer that feeds and feeds you with sensations Everyday life... Therefore, you think you are living an ordinary life.

Do you exist? And is it 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? See, you are already beginning to doubt. How to prove that you are not a brain in a vat?
Deceiving demons

The philosopher Hilary Putnam proposed this version of the brain-in-a-vat as a thought experiment in 1971. But it actually goes back to the idea of ​​the French philosopher Rene Descartes, who thought about the evil genius as early as 1641.

Such thought experiments can be frightening - and should be frightening - but still serve a useful purpose. Philosophers turn to them to find 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 is to begin to doubt everything (de omnibus dubitandum) and build a system of knowledge on the basis of these doubts. Taking this skeptical approach, he argued that only a kernel of absolute certainty would provide a reliable basis for knowledge. He said that in pursuit of the truth, a person should doubt all things at least once in his life.

Descartes believed that such a philosophical approach was available to everyone. In one of his works, he describes a scene where he sits in front of a fireplace in his house, smoking a pipe. And he asks if it is possible to believe that he has a pipe in his hand and slippers on his feet. Feelings have failed him in the past, and since they have failed before, they cannot 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 omnipotent evil demon who tricks us into thinking that we are living our own lives, when reality is very different from everything we know.

The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment and the problem of skepticism are often used in popular culture. Take, for example, The Matrix or The Beginning. By watching a filmed version of a thought experiment, the viewer can plunge into a fictional world and get good presentation about philosophical ideas.

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

While we cannot be absolutely certain that the world is exactly what it seems, we can be certain that we exist. Because every time we doubt, there must be some “I” that doubts. As a result, Descartes' reflections lead to the famous expression: "I think, therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum).

Perhaps you are truly a brain-in-a-vat, and the world around you is a computer simulation. But you exist, which means that the rest does not matter. As long as the world will seem real to us, it will be true.

Maxim Vlasov

Confident communication

About what important role communication plays in a person's life, I already wrote, I will not repeat myself, but about how important confident communication is, perhaps it is worth clarifying. 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 to a greater extent affects it. Also, if you are selfish and love yourself very much, then any of your actions and any deeds, you will consider right, and therefore, you will be confident in yourself and your righteousness. For successful communication, this is of great importance, you will never convince the interlocutor of anything if you yourself do not believe in what you are saying. And if you fail to convince the interlocutor of something, then he will convince you that he is right. This can be called a defeat, especially if you make a deal, agree on something, or solve a serious issue. You and only you can be right, otherwise it cannot be, otherwise there is no point in communication. How to develop confidence in yourself, how to believe yourself in your righteousness?

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

It is very important to gain recognition from others, the more often you will be 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 are doing. That is why people love to teach others, and if you have noticed such a feature, it is the losers who do it most often. They need this to raise their self-esteem, because they have it practically at zero. And at the same time, more successful people, are not very eager to instruct others, and mostly do it for money, they have everything in order with self-confidence.

Therefore, if you need self-confidence, if you want to communicate more confidently, then you need to find a person an order of magnitude more stupid than you, and rub your convictions into him so that he would open his mouth. You can also do this with loved ones if they respect you and don't fool you at the first opportunity. When a person listens to you, and confirms your innocence, admires you, it helps you to gain confidence in your words and in yourself naturally.

It is 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 couple for yourself, because the support of loved ones, parents or a loved one allows you to survive any others negative impacts on you. The next moment 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 smallest ones, will be recorded in great detail. This is very, very important, much more important than you might imagine. In a similar way, I brought people out of the deepest depression, helping them to 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, ruin a barrel of honey. But your diary will only be full of your successes, you do not need any failures, but you learn from them, and we learn a lesson from mistakes, but they should not pursue us, taking away our self-confidence. Therefore, you should keep such a diary, and look through it more often, making sure that you can win and can do it all the time. Well, the last thing you need to do in order to be a more self-confident person and confident in communicating with other people is to train your communication skills.

The devil is not so terrible as he is painted, and what scares you, you should do as often as possible, you should look your fear directly in the eyes and understand that it is not there. You are afraid of interviews, so go through them as often as possible, thereby honing your communication skills with an employer and getting used to such communication. Do it whether you are working or looking for a job, take it for granted and not something to make up your mind. It is the same in dealing with superiors and in dealing with the opposite sex. In this case, it does not 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 routine for you, and the understanding that people are nothing more than a means of achieving 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, they lower their self-confidence, but if you look at other people as 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, and then again and again, 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 correctly, or they do not understand you, it does not matter, because people are more likely to perceive the self-confidence of another person who can carry outright delirium. Whatever you say, no matter how you do it, be confident in your words, believe yourself and believe in yourself, remember that you are a winner, and your interlocutor will also believe in it.

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