The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

A quote by Richard Feynman.

Self-deception covers its own tracks. A quote by Daniel Goldman.

I'm really excited about this topic of self-deception because I personally think that this is the most important topic that I have ever covered throughout all of my episodes. This is the one, this is the mother topic.

For me this is the one topic that spawns all the other topics.

Your mind is inherently self-deceptive. If you are a freshman philosophy student

and university, one of the first philosophers that you'll hear about and probably read about is Renee Descartes.

He was a 16th century French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.

He invented the Cartesian coordinate system that you use in geometry.

He invented analytical geometry.

But he was also a pretty influential philosopher.

In fact, probably one of the most influential European philosophers even to this day.

Most of the last 400 years of philosophy in the West has been a sort of a debate back and forth

with Descartes and that's why they talk about it with

freshman philosophy students but the reason I say that is because see René Descartes did

a very interesting thing and that he began his philosophy by doubting absolutely everything or at least that's what he claimed.

So he would sit down and he would question everything. He would question sense perception. He would question the external world. He would question everything he would question sense perception he would question the external world he would question the existence of God he would question the existence of himself everything absolutely everything would come under doubt under skepticism and his idea was that he's going to create a philosophy

that overcomes that if it's possible built on a indubitable foundation and so one of

his chief doubts is what's called this evil

demon doubt and this is that he imagined an evil demon who can tinker with your

brain and he can program your brain with all sorts of ideas.

He can basically screw around with all your perceptions and all your thoughts and everything.

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