Donald Hoffman

speaker

2,139 appearances 4 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard 26 Jun

Donald Hoffman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

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The School of Greatness · The Math Says You've Never Seen Reality | Donald Hoffman · 15 Jun 2026 podcast

We're finding out...

by trying and trying and trying.

But the position we're in is very much like, suppose I came out and said, you know what?

I'm not a physicist, but I've got my brand new theory of particle physics.

And some of you are like, oh yeah?

Well, I've got a great new theory of particle physics.

Okay, great.

Tell me, what is your theory?

How does it explain photon-electron interactions?

And if I said to you, oh, I can't explain any specific particle.

I just have a general theory of particles.

You'd go, well, come back when you've got something real to say.

And that's where we are with consciousness.

There are all these theories of consciousness and not a one of them can explain a single conscious experience.

That's where we are.

And so, and so that we're in a dangerous place too, because we cannot, if we have a theory that can't be tested on a single conscious experience, we better not use it for other things.

Like for example, making life and death decisions, right?

A theory that can't be tested on specific conscious experiences should not be used to make life and death decisions.

So what do we know about consciousness?

The way I like to think about it is now as a scientist, so there's two ways I can try to address that.

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