◎UAP Record

Person

Donald Hoffman

documented scientist status · verified public figure

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Illustrations, recordings and archival references — each with its own provenance. A documented source is a starting point for investigation, not a verdict on its explanation.

Interview · source video

Donald Hoffman · 1:27:38

Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.

American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensed
Interview · source video

American Alchemy · 2:19:45

Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.

American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensed
Interview · source video

American Alchemy · 1:32:34

Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.

American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensed

Hoffman's 'interface theory of perception' and conscious-agent model hold that physical objects are icons rather than reality. The corpus interviews him on consciousness and physics.

Who

RoleCognitive scientist at UC Irvine; argues that consciousness is fundamental and spacetime is an interface
Sidescientist
Statusverified public figure (does the person exist and hold the stated position — not whether their claims are true)

Interviews and appearances

Claims made

  • The Orch-OR quantum-consciousness theory is rejected by most working physicists and neuroscientists on decoherence grounds (Tegmark 2000; Koch & Hepp 2006; McKemmish 2009 'not biologically feasible'; Reimers 2014 'not scientifically justified'), while 2024–25 microtubule findings (superradiance; anesthetic binding) revive quantum-biology interest without confirming the collapse mechanism.

    FACT documented 2026

    • 1:27:38 MIT Scientist: “Your Brain Evolved To Ignore Aliens – They’re Everywhere!” · Donald Hoffman ▶
      I don't think it's going to work because what you have is still they're not proposing a theory of the collapse. They don't know how the collapse happens.

  • Prakash, Stephens, Hoffman, Singh and Fields published the Fitness-Beats-Truth theorem (Adaptive Behavior, 2020): for generic fitness functions, organisms tuned to fitness are never outperformed by organisms tuned to objective structure, driving the probability that perception tracks truth toward zero.

    FACT documented 2026

    • 0:05:25 MIT Scientist: “Your Brain Evolved To Ignore Aliens – They’re Everywhere!” · Donald Hoffman ▶
      what we discovered is the probability is zero that any sensory system has ever been shaped to see any

  • Hoffman's recursive trace logic — Markov-chain observers, trace sub-windows, and a claimed derivation of time dilation, length contraction and free-particle wave functions — is an unpublished research program with nine posted conjectures and no community evaluation.

    INFERENCE thin 2026

    • 1:36:28 MIT Scientist: “Your Brain Evolved To Ignore Aliens – They’re Everywhere!” · Donald Hoffman ▶
      e have to prove that we can get special relativity out of this. >> Prove that we can get curved space time Einstein's theory of gravity. prove that we can get the Borne rule

Mentioned in the corpus

Passages this record cites, with the stamp of the block each quote sits in.

Named in 9 uploads (automatic name matching, 13 mentions)

Sources on this record

  • 1:27:38 MIT Scientist: “Your Brain Evolved To Ignore Aliens – They’re Everywhere!” · Donald Hoffman ▶
    I don't think it's going to work because what you have is still they're not proposing a theory of the collapse. They don't know how the collapse happens.
  • 0:05:25 MIT Scientist: “Your Brain Evolved To Ignore Aliens – They’re Everywhere!” · Donald Hoffman ▶
    what we discovered is the probability is zero that any sensory system has ever been shaped to see any

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