The School of Greatness · 2026-06-15 · 84 min · 14,306 words

The Math Says You've Never Seen Reality | Donald Hoffman

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Based on the research and the science that you've done, what we are experiencing right now as human beings is not the full truth. You could call it a simulation, you could call it a game. There is something that is running our body and our thoughts in this world. Is that what I'm hearing you say? That's right.

If you look at the mathematics of evolutionary theory very, very carefully, it basically says the probability that any organism has ever been shaped to see any aspect of reality as it is is zero. Cognitive scientist, professor, and author of The Case Against Reality, by the end of this conversation you'll be forced to question everything you thought you knew about the world around you. Please welcome Donald Hoffman. As you get more and more energy into a smaller and smaller region of space, Einstein tells us that that energy is also the same thing as mass.

And when you get that mass to a high enough point, spacetime collapses into a black hole and you actually destroy the very thing you're trying to observe. So would you say that there is no reality, there's just perspective of what we're experiencing? I would say that from your research and your studies, is what we see real when our eyes are open or what we see when our eyes are closed and our mind more of reality than what is real.

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