Top Psychologist & Scientist (Donald Hoffman): Science Has the Answer to Why Seeing True Reality Would Kill You!

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

No matter how you travel, it's good to have a plan. Some people plan every minute. No sleep, bus, museum, another museum, while others only plan to take it day by day. When it comes to your finances, a plan is just as important. You can count on Credit Karma to give you the insights you need to understand your options, so you can take charge of your financial path and find your way to money. Intuit Credit Karma, Karma you can count on. Download the app today.

Donald Hoffman (0:30)

The world that you're seeing isn't the true world. All of this that I'm seeing right now is just a virtual reality. It's like you're born with a headset on playing a video game. That's your reality. But if you're the programmer who wrote the code for the game, you know that there's an entire world outside of it, and as the programmer, you can do miracles.

Steven Bartlett (0:47)

Do you think we're getting closer to being able to edit the code?

Donald Hoffman (0:49)

That's exactly what I'm working on right now, and we're opening up a realm of new technologies that are far more powerful than anything we've seen before, like time travel, and nuclear bombs will be like firecrackers.

Steven Bartlett (0:59)

Will people suffer?

Donald Hoffman (1:00)

So it's like Pandora's Box. There's all sorts of nasty surprises, but they also could be miraculous. But either way, just in the last few months, it started to crack open.

Steven Bartlett (1:08)

So let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_4 (1:09)

Okay, so Professor Donald Hoffman is the cognitive scientist pushing the boundaries of how we perceive reality, and how we can unlock our full potential as human beings.

Donald Hoffman (1:17)

According to Darwin's theory, our sensory systems, eyes, ears, smell, touch, are not shaped to show us the truth. They were shaped to keep you alive long enough to reproduce successfully, because seeing the truth takes too much time and energy. And so whatever reality is, it's utterly unlike anything that I perceive.

Steven Bartlett (1:36)

But what does this all mean for the nature of how one should understand their life?

Donald Hoffman (1:40)

Well, if you're stuck in a boring world, that's a world of your own creation. That's not the real world. And my conscious experiences are nothing but what my brain creates. And so we feel inadequate, and we feel like we need to compete with other people. But you're the inventor of this whole thing. You have nothing to prove. And there are much more interesting perspectives that we can take on ourselves. So if you really knew who you are, you would see no need to compare or compete.

Steven Bartlett (2:02)

And is there a way for me to understand who I am?

Donald Hoffman (2:04)

If you want to understand the truth of who you are beyond just this headset description of you, then you have to...

Steven Bartlett (2:14)

Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning in to the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.

Professor Donald Hoffman, do you think that the listeners of this show, the people listening right now, understand the nature of reality and the world that they're looking at and see?

Donald Hoffman (3:13)

I think that no one, even the most advanced professionals, really understands the nature of reality and it's one of the big open problems and questions in science today. We all might have ideas. We might think we know something. Our best science suggests that our imagination is not yet big enough. We need to explore further.

Steven Bartlett (3:33)

What is it that you believe is the big sort of misconception about how we perceive reality?

Donald Hoffman (3:39)

Well, most of us think of reality as whatever is inside space and time. We actually know that space-time cannot be the fundamental nature of reality.