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Conscious agents form the fundamental ontology
Reality, at its base, is composed of interacting conscious agents, not particles, fields, or spacetime points.
UpcomingJune 12, 2026Donald Hoffman + Andrew Gallimore at The Lighthouse Campus, Los AngelesJune 12, 2026 · Donald Hoffman + Andrew Gallimore
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The Trace Institute
What if reality is not what we think it is?
The Trace Institute is a research initiative investigating consciousness as fundamental to reality, and spacetime as the interface, not the substrate.
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The thesis
Modern science assumes spacetime and matter as fundamental. The Trace Institute proposes the inverse: consciousness is fundamental, and the physical world is the interface through which it interacts.
Our work is mathematical, peer-reviewed, and built from first principles. We are not philosophers asking what reality might be. We are scientists and mathematicians proposing a formal framework, Trace Logic, that derives quantum theory and general relativity from a deeper substrate of conscious agents and their dynamics.
The Eight Conjectures
A framework for a deeper reality.
Eight formal conjectures direct the Institute's work. Together they describe a path from conscious agents to the standard models of physics and biology.
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Spacetime emerges from agent dynamics
Space and time are not the stage on which physics unfolds. They are projections of the dynamics between conscious agents.
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Quantum formalism derives from agent interactions
The mathematics of quantum mechanics is recoverable as a limit of the formal dynamics of conscious agent networks.
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General relativity emerges from Trace Logic
Gravity and the curvature of spacetime arise as large-scale features of the same underlying logic governing agent dynamics.
The team
Frontier scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers.
Donald Hoffman
Research teamCognitive Scientist · UC Irvine
Chetan Prakash
Research teamMathematician · Cal State San Bernardino
Robert Prentner
Research teamPhilosopher of Science · Cognitive Sciences
Gaspard Giroud des Montagnes
Co-founderInstitute architect
Andrew Gallimore
Affiliated researcherNeurobiologist · Pharmacologist
Michael Levin
Affiliated researcherBiologist · Tufts University
Media
Conversations and lectures.
Donald Hoffman's appearances across podcasts, conferences, and lectures, alongside an expanding library of original work from the Institute.
Get involved
A research program at the edge of physics, mathematics, and consciousness.
The Institute is privately supported. Help fund the work, follow the research, or join us as a collaborator.