Lilian Dindo: Mindfulness, Acceptance, Coping with Obsessive Thoughts, and ACT Therapy
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/L_hI7JNsbt0
Lilian Dindo is a Professor of Medicine at Baylor College, and we talk about ACT therapy.
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LILIAN'S LINKS:
-http://actfindyourpath.com
-https://www.bcm.edu/people-search/lilian-dindo-20557
-https://www.bcm.edu/research/faculty-labs/act-on-health-lab
-http://contextualscience.org
LINKS MENTIONED:
-Karl Friston episode: https://youtu.be/SWtFU1Lit3M
-A H Almaas episode: https://youtu.be/6JlKf1QAvXA
-Curt's Crash Course on Theoretical Physics: https://youtu.be/e8kyvdPP8os
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:04:05 What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) therapy?
00:08:12 Suffering is a part of life
00:11:06 ACT is not just for therapy, but for general illness and rejection
00:14:24 Lilian's feeling anxiety in this interview *right now*, but ACT is helping
00:15:57 Dealing with panic attacks
00:18:22 "Anxiety" and "excitement" are physiologically indistinguishable
00:20:00 Implementing ACT (specific example)
00:26:15 Stop avoiding. The mind works by addition (not subtraction)!
00:30:00 Choosing courage vs. "mustering" courage
00:30:51 Coping vs. mollifying
00:33:45 Goal oriented vs. Value oriented
00:36:06 How to uncover your own values?
00:42:14 Do values imply a "should"? (specific example)
00:47:45 What separates those for whom therapy works for, from those who it doesn't?
00:54:57 Suicidal ideation / psychosis (there's hope with ACT)
00:57:14 Enhancing learning math / physics
00:59:50 Acceptance vs Acknowledgement
01:01:40 Physical vs Psychology (mind and body connection)
01:05:53 A visual example you can employ to abate anxiety
01:10:39 The role of belief / hope / faith / trust
01:11:08 "Thanking" the negative thought / emotion
01:11:50 People don't suffer with just ONE issue, but multiple
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1:14:59
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1:14:59
The Mathematics That Predicts Your DMT Trip
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Live from MIT Media Lab’s Augmentation Lab Summit, I speak with Andres Gomez-Emilsson of the Qualia Research Institute about modeling consciousness and rendering it. You haven't seen psychedelic visuals /experiences explained like this before. We separate qualia from sensory input and map the “geometry” of experience through color—synesthesia, pure hues, after-images, and “is your blue my blue?” Andres demos QRI’s GPU tool, a Photoshop for psychedelia built on coupled oscillators and feedback. It recreates LSD/psilocybin’s fractal tapestries, DMT’s entity-like mirror tunnels, global synchrony, and “white-out.” We cover “psychedelic thermodynamics,” neural annealing and valence flips, and pseudo-time—loops and timeless stretches. The episode makes a case for real-time, in-state phenomenology over questionnaires. This was specifically structured to be informative to both those who have never experienced psychedelics and those who are, let’s say, well acquainted.
Thank you to Dunya Baradari, Addy Cha, and Andres, of course.
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1:30:23
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1:30:23
Curt Jaimungal: Philosophers vs. Physicists
Curt discusses how philosophy has directly contributed to physics through Bell's theorem, decoherence theory, the hole argument, and more. Meanwhile, via John Norton, we uncover the hidden philosophical assumptions in physics that most scientists don’t even realize they’re making.
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Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9...
SUPPORT:
Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos):
/ @theoriesofeverything
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John Norton [TOE]: • The 300-Year-Old Physics Mistake No One No...
Neil deGrasse Tyson [TOE]: • "Philosophers Are USELESS!" Neil & Curt Cl...
How Not to Do Philosophy of Science [article]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Good...
Jacob Barandes [TOE]: • The Physicist Who Found Quantum Theory's U...
The Hole Argument: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sp...
General covariance and general relativity [paper]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/pape...
Emily Adlam Λ Jacob Barandes [TOE]: • Harvard Physicist: Why Multiple Universes ...
Eaters of the lotus [paper]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/pape...
John Norton’s profile: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/jdno...
Hempel (1988) - Oltre il positivismo logico
Popper (1963) - Conjectures and Refutations, Ch. 3
Deutsch (1997) - The Fabric of Reality
SOCIALS:
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LINKS MENTIONED:
For further reading on these critiques of instrumentalism:
#science
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9:31
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9:31
Stephen Wolfram: Computation, Physics, Going Beyond "Evolution"
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In this episode, I speak with Stephen Wolfram—creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Language—about a “new kind of science” that treats the universe as computation. We explore computational irreducibility, discrete space, multi-way systems, and how the observer shapes the laws we perceive—from the second law of thermodynamics to quantum mechanics. Wolfram reframes Feynman diagrams as causal structures, connects evolution and modern AI through coarse fitness and assembled “lumps” of computation, and sketches a nascent theory of biology as bulk orchestration. We also discuss what makes science good: new tools, ruthless visualization, respect for history, and a field he calls “ruliology”—the study of simple rules, where anyone can still make real contributions. This is basically a documentary akin to The Life and Times of Stephen Wolfram. I hope you enjoy it.
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MIT physicist Max Tegmark argues AI now belongs inside physics—and that consciousness will be next. He separates intelligence (goal-achieving behavior) from consciousness (subjective experience), sketches falsifiable experiments using brain-reading tech and rigorous theories (e.g., IIT/φ), and shows how ideas like Hopfield energy landscapes make memory “feel” like physics. We get into mechanistic interpretability (sparse autoencoders), number representations that snap into clean geometry, why RLHF mostly aligns behavior (not goals), and the stakes as AI progress accelerates from “underhyped” to civilization-shaping. It’s a masterclass on where mind, math, and machines collide.
Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com
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Timestamps:
- 00:00 - Why AI is the New Frontier of Physics
- 09:38 - Is Consciousness Just a Byproduct of Intelligence?
- 16:43 - A Falsifiable Theory of Consciousness? (The MEG Helmet Experiment)
- 27:34 - Beyond Neural Correlates: A New Paradigm for Scientific Inquiry
- 38:40 - Humanity: The Masters of Underestimation (Fermi's AI Analogy)
- 51:27 - What Are an AI's True Goals? (The Serial Killer Problem)
- 1:03:42 - Fermat's Principle, Entropy, and the Physics of Goals
- 1:15:52 - Eureka Moment: When an AI Discovered Geometry on Its Own
- 1:30:01 - Refuting the "AI Doomers": We Have More Agency Than We Think
Links mentioned:
- Max’s Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eBXEZxgAAAAJ&hl=en
- Language Models Use Trigonometry to Do Addition [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00873
- Generalization from Starvation [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08255
- Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]: https://youtu.be/b_DUft-BdIE
- Michael Levin [TOE]: https://youtu.be/c8iFtaltX-s
- Iceberg of Consciousness [TOE]: https://youtu.be/65yjqIDghEk
- Improved Measures of Integrated Information [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.02626
- David Kaiser [TOE]: https://youtu.be/_yebLXsIdwo
- Iain McGilchrist [TOE]: https://youtu.be/Q9sBKCd2HD0
- Elan Barenholtz & William Hahn [TOE]: https://youtu.be/A36OumnSrWY
- Daniel Schmachtenberger [TOE]: https://youtu.be/g7WtcTATa2U
- Ted Jacobson [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8
- The “All Possible Paths” Myth [TOE]: https://youtu.be/XcY3ZtgYis0
SUPPORT:
- Become a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos):
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Guests do not pay to appear. Theories of Everything receives revenue solely from viewer donations, platform ads, and clearly labelled sponsors; no guest or associated entity has ever given compensation, directly or through intermediaries.
#science
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Exploring theoretical physics, consciousness, Ai, and God in a technically rigorous manner. If you'd like to support this endeavor, then please visit the Patreon ( https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal ). Thank you for your charitable and kindhearted support. My name's Curt Jaimungal, a Torontonian with a degree in mathematical physics from the University of Toronto and I analyze various Theories of Everything from this analytic perspective, though more and more opening up to alternative approaches. The separating factor of TOE from other podcasts is its focus on depth even at the risk of limiting the audience due to how much detail we delve into subjects. Paralleling the intensity found in academic discourse, we're increasingly embracing a spectrum of unconventional ideas to conduct research during this podcast, rather than merely conveying existing information. Contact toe [at] indiefilmTO [dot] com for business inquiries / sponsorship.
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