Donald Hoffman is launching a research institute to prove spacetime is not fundamental
Physicist-turned-consciousness researcher Donald Hoffman is standing up a formal institute to pursue eight mathematical conjectures about the foundations of reality, with a three-year proof target.
Donald Hoffman, the cognitive scientist best known for his “interface theory of perception,” is announcing the Trace Research Institute, set to launch in summer 2026. The institute will pursue his program arguing that spacetime cannot be fundamental, that it “stops at the Planck scale,” and that observation must replace it as the starting point for a new physics.
I have some mathematicians and physicists working with me and we have eight specific mathematical conjectures that I'm hoping to prove in the next three years. Donald Hoffman
The program rests on a specific, testable agenda. Hoffman says he has mathematicians and physicists working with him on eight mathematical conjectures to be proved within three years. One direction involves cyclic Markov chains: Hoffman proposes that the speed of light emerges from the minimum commute time between observations in such chains, offering a mathematical grounding for the relativistic speed limit without assuming spacetime as given.
Underpinning all of it is a sharp claim from evolutionary theory. Hoffman argues that evolution drives the probability of accurate perception of objective reality to zero, meaning no measurement can be assumed to give a true picture of what is actually out there. That puts him in direct tension with scientific realism, and it is the tension the institute intends to make mathematically precise rather than merely philosophical.