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 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

So it's the best we can do.

So absolutely, since neuroscience is the best we can do, study neuroscience.

Well, I remember around 1986,

when I first realized I was doing mathematical models with my colleagues Chetan Prakash and Bruce Bennett, trying to understand the process of observation with mathematical precision.

And I still remember the moment when the mathematics that we had developed forced me to realize that everything that I was seeing was just

a creation, my creation, a headset.

That was such a stunning shock to me because I'd been studying, I was at MIT from 79 to 83, studying visual perception, mathematical models, did my PhD on it.

And I'd been working from 83 to 86 on our own mathematical models.

And when I finally realized that math was basically saying to me, physicalism is false, you're making this world up.

I had to sit down because I was so stunned.

it's very much like the color of red that you see here, right?

That color is an experience that you have.

And a physicist would say to you, well, what's really going on is that there are photons

coming from that cup to your eye.

And those photons have certain wavelengths and those wavelengths are what you're perceiving as color, but light itself has no color.

So where is the color?

Well, it's not in the light.

It's because light has no color.

It has wavelength.

It's not on the cup.

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