Our American Alchemist this week is Donald Hoffman. Sign Up With Our Sponsors Below For Exclusive Alchemy Deals! Qualia: Curious about creatine? Go to https://qualialife.com/JESSE to get 50% off and save an extra 15% with the code JESSE. Factor: Head to https://Factormeals.com/alchemy50off and use code alchemy50off to get 50% off Superpower: Go to https://Superpower.com and use code ALCHEMY for $20 off your membership this year. Take the guesswork out of getting healthy in 2026. Get full body testing that goes 5x deeper than an annual physical and a personalized action plan that tells you exactly what to do next. All for just $199. Donald Hoffman spent 40 years building a mathematical framework he calls the recursive trace logic. It starts with one assumption: consciousness is fundamental, not physics. From there the math takes over. He can already derive time dilation, length contraction, and quantum wave functions from these hidden markov matrices. He has nine open conjectures that, if proven, would subsume both general relativity and quantum field theory as trivial special cases of a more general theory of observation. John Wheeler cited his 1989 book on observer mechanics in the It From Bit paper. Nima Arkani-Hamed and Nobel laureate David Gross are arriving at the same conclusion from the physics side: spacetime is doomed. -------------------------- Support Our Other Projects Below! Grab Your American Alchemy Merch Here ➤ https://www.americanalchemymerch.com/ Join The American Alchemy Magazine Here ➤ https://americanalchemymagazine.substack.com/ Subscribe To Our Clips Channel (10 Minute Highlights!) ➤ https://www.youtube.com/@UC8ZKTXN9trt5dhixz6b6l6w -------------------------- JOIN OUR WHOP (Early/Ad Free Episodes) ➤ https://whop.com/jessemichels Instagram ➤ https://www.instagram.com/jessemichelsofficial TikTok ➤ https://www.tiktok.com/@itsjessemichels X ➤ https://twitter.com/AlchemyAmerican Spotify ➤ https://tinyurl.com/jessemichelsspotify Clips Channel ➤ https://www.youtube.com/@JesseMichelsClips Apply For Jobs ➤ apply@jessemichelsmedia.com Sponsor Inquiries ➤ sponsor@jessemichelsmedia.com Media Inquiries ➤ media@jessemichelsmedia.com Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 2:04 - Sponsor (Factor) 3:30 - Fitness Beats Perception 7:00 - The Desktop Interface 13:26 - Near-Death & Remote Viewing 20:42 - Disembodied Consciousness 30:13 - Sponsors (Superpower, Qualia) 35:20 - Hacking Perception 46:15 - The Hard Problem 58:13 - Wheeler, Leibniz & Observers 1:01:13 - Recursive Trace Logic 1:15:12 - UAP & The Trace Logic 1:28:23 - Consciousness As Primitive 1:33:25 - Space-Time Is Doomed 1:39:12 - AI, Minsky & Mike Levin 1:47:02 - UFOs At Exit Points 1:53:46 - The Amplituhedron 2:06:41 - Quantum Interpretations 2:21:37 - Higher Intelligences 2:28:06 - Unity of Consciousness 2:34:05 - Do You Believe In God? 2:44:13 - The Table Doesn't Exist 2:52:13 - Infinite Alien Intelligences 3:01:07 - Trace Logic As AI 3:18:38 - Outro