The person we cannot avoid in life is ourselves. But our perception, our memory and our thinking turn out to be limited and prone to error on closer inspection. What does this mean for our relationship to the world and to ourselves? How much can we trust ourselves? The ability to think about ourselves is a great gift for humans: it allows us, for example, to reminisce or make plans for our own future. But at the same time it also allows us to question ourselves, to take a self-critical look in the mirror. People can recognize that their memories are highly unreliable. We now know that colors do not actually occur in nature, but are an idea that the eye and brain create from wavelengths. Even whether something like reality is recognizable at all can be questioned. Added to this is a tendency to overestimate oneself and other cognitive distortions. But is it therefore appropriate to lose trust in oneself? The program explores this question. Many errors and inadequacies can have an evolutionary meaning or at least an evolutionary explanation. So how much self-criticism and self-knowledge is good? Are they the key to a right, good life, or do they paralyze and make you unhappy? And what could a refusal to confront one's own limitations perhaps mean for others? Magazine, Director: Niklas Nau (D 2022, 30 min) Sources and further links: Self-doubt has a long history in philosophy. How much can we actually know about ourselves, the world and the "truth"? An introduction can be found here: Epistemic Self-Doubt (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ep... or - to listen to - here: The Philosophy of Skepticism - Nothing is really true - radioWissen BR Podcast: https://www.br.de/mediathek/podcast/r... What is the "self"? An overview of Thomas Metzinger's publications and projects on this topic can be found on his website at the University of Mainz: Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dr. Thomas Metzinger Philosophical Seminar: https://www.philosophie.fb05.uni-main... Would our "remembering self" voluntarily subject us to more pain? The study by Daniel Kahneman et al. on this: When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40062570 How do we perceive the world, how do we interact with it and with each other, and how sure are we about it? Questions that Ophelia Deroy's interdisciplinary research group "Cognition, Values, Behavior" deals with: CVBE - Philosophy & cognitive neuroscience research in Munich: https://cvbers.com/ We cannot do this from within ourselves. What can we really know about what ideas look like in other people's heads? What would it be like to be a shark? Or, as the philosopher Thomas Nagel asked in a famous thought experiment, a bat? What Is It Like to Be a Bat?: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/i... Is gut thinking not problematic per se, but one of people's greatest strengths in the right situations? More on this in the work of Gerd Gigerenzer: Gerd Gigerenzer Max Planck Institute for Human Development: https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/mitarb... An overview study on how "framing" can lead patients to decide for or against an operation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... How do you rate your chances in a fight against a grizzly bear? Or a lion, or a chimpanzee? The results of a YouGov survey on this topic: https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifes... How important are self-esteem and self-confidence? More on this can be found in the publications of Astrid Schütz. Astrid Schütz - Chair of Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics (uni-bamberg.de): https://www.uni-bamberg.de/perspsych/... #selfcritical #selfknowledge #selfconfidence Video available on YouTube until 17/09/2025 Subscribe to ARTE's YouTube channel: / artede Follow us on social networks: Facebook: / arte.tv Twitter: / artede Instagram: / arte.tv