Picture this: I’m nine, sprawled on the grass in my backyard, staring at a sky so blue it feels like it’s lying to me. My dog, Rusty, is chewing on a stick nearby, oblivious to the fact that I’m wrestling with a question too big for my kid brain-what’s really out there? The clouds drift, morphing into dragons and castles, and I wonder if they’re real or just my eyes playing tricks. That moment, that childish curiosity, never left me. It’s the same spark that drove me to listen to Professor Donald Hoffman on The Diary of a CEO, where he dropped a bomb: the world we see? It’s not real. It’s a headset, a virtual reality our brains cooked up to keep us alive. And honestly? That idea feels like a lightning bolt and a warm hug all at once.
What if everything-your coffee mug, the hum of traffic outside, the ache in your chest when you’re scrolling through bad news-is just a projection? Hoffman, a cognitive scientist who’s spent decades poking at the edges of perception, says our senses aren’t built to show us the truth. They’re survival tools, shaped by evolution to prioritize reproduction over revelation. Seeing the real reality? Too much energy, too much time. Our brains, like lazy coders, took shortcuts. They built a user interface-space, time, objects-that’s just good enough to keep us from tripping over our own feet. It’s like we’re all playing Grand Theft Auto, but we’re not the programmer. We’re the character, blissfully unaware of the code running the show.
This hits me hard. I think about that time in Berlin, standing in front of a mural-vibrant reds and blues swirling into a face that seemed to stare back. I felt something, you know? Like the art was real in a way that transcended paint on concrete. But Hoffman’s saying that mural, that feeling, even the cobblestone under my boots-it’s all part of the headset. Space-time, the framework we lean into, falls apart at the tiniest scales. At 10^-33 centimeters, physics says space itself stops making sense. No distance, no time, just… something else. Something our eyes and ears can’t parse. It’s humbling, like realizing the universe is a book written in a language I’ll never read.
But here’s where it gets wild. Hoffman’s not just tearing down our reality; he’s building something new. He’s got mathematical proofs-rigorous, nerdy stuff-that back up Darwin’s theory in a way most folks miss. Our senses don’t show us truth because truth is calorie-expensive. Think about bats, navigating with echolocation, their world a sonic map we can’t even imagine. Or those insects that lay eggs on water, guided by the polarization of light. They don’t see our reality, and we don’t see theirs. We’re all locked in our own VR games, optimized for survival, not for some grand cosmic truth. And yet, Hoffman’s simulations show the probability of our senses revealing objective reality is zero. Zero! That’s not a theory; that’s a gut punch.
So, what’s it like to live with this? I’m sitting here, typing in a London flat while rain taps the window, and I’m wondering-does it change how I move through the world? Hoffman says yes. If this reality is a headset, then the stress, the need to prove myself, the comparison game-it’s all an illusion I’m buying into. I think of my friend Sarah, who once told me over a pint how she felt like she was never enough. Job, looks, Instagram likes-she was chasing a finish line that kept moving. Hoffman’s point is that we’re the ones drawing that line. We’re infinite, he says, already whole, already the source of this game. The suffering comes when we forget that, when we think we’re just the avatar.
I pause, sip my tea-too cold now-and let that sink in. It’s liberating, isn’t it? To think that the email that pissed me off this morning, the one that made my stomach knot, is just a pixel in the game. I could choose to step back, to say, This isn’t me. I’m bigger than this. Hoffman talks about love, about how your neighbor is you, how we’re all one consciousness playing different roles. It’s why Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” why the Gita and Islam echo the same truth: unconditional love isn’t just nice, it’s the only thing that makes sense when you see through the headset. I think of the stranger on the subway last week, the one who smiled at me when I dropped my book. That moment felt real, more real than the pixels on my phone. Maybe that’s a glimpse of the infinite, slipping through the cracks.
But it’s not all warm fuzzies. Hoffman’s cracking open Pandora’s box. If we can edit the code of this reality-think time travel, tech that makes nuclear bombs look like firecrackers-it’s thrilling and terrifying. Imagine a world where we build AI not just to mimic intelligence but to tap into consciousness itself. He’s working on that, using Markov chains to minimize surprise, to make machines that don’t just correlate data but understand in a way that feels alive. It’s heady stuff, like standing on the edge of a cliff, wind in your face, not sure if you’re about to fly or fall.
So, where does this leave us? I’m back to that kid in the backyard, staring at the sky, Rusty now long gone but still vivid in my memory. Hoffman’s work is a call to curiosity, to never assume we’ve got it all figured out. Reality is wilder than we can dream, and we’re part of it-not just players, but creators. The practical takeaway? Love fiercely, without judgement, because we’re all the same consciousness under the headset. And when life stings-when the email’s shitty, when the world feels heavy-remind yourself: this is the game you chose. You’re infinite. You don’t need to prove a damn thing.
What would you do if you knew you were infinite? Would you still chase the same goals, or would you rewrite the rules of your game?