Why Our Senses Lie to Us | Dr. Donald Hoffman

Donald Hoffman (0:00)

I'm deeply convinced that I don't know. I'm deeply convinced that everything that I've been taught is probably largely wrong.

Everything that I've believed is probably largely wrong. And one of the big, big things that I have to work on as a person is to be good with that, to be good with not knowing and to face the fundamental and profound ignorance that's part of the human condition.

We don't like that. We want to think that we have the answers and we know all the way down. And what science teaches us is that even our best scientific theories are almost surely deeply flawed. And they're the best we've got so far.

Michael Gervais (0:47)

Thank you.

Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I am a sport and performance psychologist. Now, the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn.

From people who are flat out switched on, who have dedicated their life efforts towards mastery, they're trying to get to the truth of stuff, and they're using their craft to figure that out.

I wanna take a minute here to announce a really exciting event that we have coming up. As you continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2024, I wanna pose a question. What are you doing right now to be great with stress? How are you working with stress on your pursuit towards your most important ambitions and goals? And I just wanna get right to the heart of the key elements, one in particular, for what it takes to excel in today's high heat, high stakes world. Because stress is not the problem that we think it is. Stress is a synonym for change. And our ability to be agile with change, that is the real opportunity at hand. So if you're wanting to unlock extraordinary results and sustainable performance in your life, it's not about avoiding or reducing stress. And as simple as that sounds, it's very tricky to do, but it is about fundamentally changing your relationship with it.

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Oh, it's so good. So I got introduced to Donald through the legendary Deepak Chopra. And so I was really excited to speak with him. And Donald received his PhD from MIT and is the author of over 120 scientific papers and three books, including The Case Against Reality, Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes.

He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for Early Career Research and the Rustam Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation and the Trolland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences.