American Alchemy with Jesse Michels

MIT Scientist: “Your Brain Evolved To Ignore Aliens – They’re Everywhere!”

June 2, 2026·3h 21m·8-min readinterviewscience
Podzilla Summary (8 min)
TLDR
According to evolutionary game theory, the probability that any organism's sensory system has evolved to perceive objective reality is precisely zero. Instead, perception is a species-specific interface shaped by fitness, not truth. A new mathematical framework called recursive trace logic

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Guest

D

Donald Hoffman

interview on American Alchemy with Jesse Michels

Mentions

Books, people, and resources mentioned in this episode.

People

Donald HoffmanJesse MichaelsJohn WheelerNima Arkani-HamedDavid Gross

Books

Observer Mechanicsby Donald Hoffman, Bruce Bennett, Chaitan Prakash

Topics

Artificial IntelligenceNeurosciencePhilosophyPhysicsQuantum Computing

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