"I shall suppose, therefore, that there is, not a true God, who is the sovereign source of truth, but some evil demon, no less cunning and deceiving than powerful, who has used all his artifice to deceive me. I will suppose that the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things that we see, are only illusions and deceptions which he uses to take me in. I will consider myself as having no hands, eyes, flesh, blood or senses, but as believing wrongly that I have all these things."

Rene Descartes, "First Meditation about the Things We May Doubt"

It was 1641 when Rene Descartes released his meditations about the untrustworthiness of human existence. Because everything that we've sensed and all that we've ever been taught could have been explicitly generated and displayed to us by a so-called "Evil Demon" to trick and confuse us, there was indeed little we could depend on truly reflecting the core nature of reality around us. Just as we lie dormant at night believing wholeheartedly in the truth of our dreams, so too do we arbitrarily (and possibly incorrectly) trust that the world around us is indeed what we perceive it to be.

The more we trust the world around us, the more we allow it to guide our own actions and opinions for example, those who talk in their sleep are simply responding to the environment in which they are immersed. Ironically, excess distrust of the world around...