Uploaded December 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago

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Donald Hoffman (@donaldhoffman) is a cognitive scientist, popular author and Professor of Cognitive Science at UC Irvine. He studies how our visual perception, guided by millions of years of natural selection, authors every aspect of our everyday reality.

Don has co-authored two technical books: Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory of Perception which offers a theory of consciousness and its relationship to physics and Automotive Lighting and Human Vision which applies vision science to vehicle lighting.

Full episode:

http://disruptors.fm/79-solving-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-with-a-mathematical-god-and-messed-up-perception-of-reality-donald-hoffman

In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

- How our perception differs from reality, big time
- The nature of consciousness
- Why we are what we see and believe
- How your brain constructs an alternate universe
- Possible problems with Darwin's Theory of Evolution
- Don's mathematical definition of god
- Why evolution doesn't optimize for intelligence
- How psychedelics actually impact our subjective reality
- The hard problem and how to maybe solve it
- Understanding the inner workings of science
- Why physics is probably wrong and confused
- What we can learn from VR about real life
- Why Don believed humans were just machines, and what he thinks now


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