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Smart Funny Tortured

Smart Funny Tortured

Written by: Paul Chamberlain
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 Conversations with creatives on when they broke down, broke through, and how they now peacefully(ish) coexist with their gifts.© 2002-2021 Cerebral Itch Labs, LLC All Rights Reserved Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Self-Help Social Sciences Success
Episodes
  • Sam Senchal on The God Conjecture: Physics, Soul, and Why Your Life Matters

    Sam Senchal on The God Conjecture: Physics, Soul, and Why Your Life Matters
    Jan 9 2026
    What if the universe isn’t a cold, dumb machine or a cosmic soap opera run by a temperamental sky-dad—but something deeper that both science and spirituality have been circling from opposite sides?In this conversation, Paul welcomes his friend Sam, the mind behind The God Conjecture: a framework that tries to show how a certain model of God and creation can sit cleanly inside modern physics and computation. Drawing on Wolfram’s Ruliad (the space of all possible computations), Kabbalistic cosmology, and observer theory, Sam lays out a universe in which conscious beings aren’t accidents—they’re how reality learns about itself. Then Paul does what he does best: he brings all of those ideas back down to the complexities of real life.They talk about:Why ethics might be something we discover, not invent—like math or gravity.How “evil” can be understood as inefficient paths that burn time and energy instead of moving us toward integration.Shame, addiction, and rock bottom as the narrowest point in your story that opens into the widest cone of new possibilities—if you survive it.How postmodernism helped us break all the old frames… and why it’s now failing to put anything back together.Why humans, for all our flaws, might still be the most “godlike” observers we know—because of our creativity, metaphor, and ability to turn trauma into art, love, and sovereignty.If you’ve ever felt too smart for the religion you grew up with and too soulful for a purely mechanical universe, this episode sits exactly in that tension: science, mysticism, shame, crisis, and the stubborn hope that your life actually matters.Episode Highlights:[00:00] – Why the God Conjecture?Sam’s journey from inventing billion-dollar financial structures and living the “Instagram life” to Kabbalah, fatherhood, and the need for a non-nihilistic compass for his son.[12:04] – The Ruliad, observers, and a different kind of “God debate.”What the Ruliad is in human terms, why the usual “does God exist?” argument is stuck, and how the God Conjecture reframes the whole thing.[20:21] – Paul’s translation: sacredness without dogma.Paul reflects back what he’s hearing: a universe with order and sacredness that doesn’t require us to crawl back into dogma or superstition.[23:51] – Ethics as discovery, not invention.Sam’s claim that ethics are more like math than fashion trends, and that “good” can be seen as the efficient path through the possibility space.[28:26] – Evil as inefficiency.A wild reframe: evil as what burns cycles, wastes computation, and keeps systems stuck near the boundary instead of moving toward integration.[33:11] – Shame, rock bottom, and the cone of possibility.Paul brings in crisis coaching and Smart Funny Tortured: why he quietly smiles when someone hits rock bottom, and how that maps to Sam’s formal model.[39:21] – Why big religions don’t die.The idea that major spiritual traditions persist because they posit the largest possible “limit object”—Dao, Brahman, Ein Sof, Logos—which psychologically explodes our sense of what’s possible.[42:56] – Postmodernism’s gift and collapse.From “genre mashup superpower” to fragmented islands and political fracture: how postmodernism helped us, and why it’s not evolutionarily fit anymore.[54:01] – Humans vs AI: who’s more “godlike”?Why Sam thinks human observers are still far more powerful than current AI, what true machine consciousness would require, and how creativity and metaphor act as “attractors” in the future.[1:04:41] – Post-traumatic sovereignty as higher-order observing.Paul brings it home: Smart Funny Tortured, siege on shame, and what it means to become the kind of observer who can integrate more reality without shattering. Links & resourcesSam’s paper: The God Conjecture (GitHub) Paul’s Smart Funny Tortured framework: smartfunnytortured.comMentioned concepts and thinkers:Wolfram’s RuliadKabbalistic cosmology (Ein Sof, Tzimtzum, Sefirot)Postmodernism and the noospherePost-traumatic sovereignty & Siege on Shame (SFT universe)GuestSam Alexander SenchalSam Alexander Senchal is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of observation, consciousness, meaning, free will, computational physics, analytic philosophy, and theology. He is published with the Wolfram Institute, where his work engages deeply with ideas like the Ruliad and observer theory, and how they might connect to long-standing questions about God, ethics, and human experience.Before stepping into this frontier space, Sam spent years in investing and product design for large institutions, raising and investing roughly $500 million over his career. That background in high-stakes, real-world systems gives his philosophical and theological work a rare groundedness: he’s not just speculating about abstract universes, he’s lived inside the machinery of this one.The God Conjecture—the focal point ...
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • David Shapiro on AI, Time Sovereignty, and the Analog Future

    David Shapiro on AI, Time Sovereignty, and the Analog Future
    Oct 9 2025

    AI futurist and author David Shapiro joins Paul to map the path between panic and progress. We dig into why he invests his “limited cognitive cycles” in building rather than despair, the liminal now he calls Vesperance (and why the fever will “break” in public debates), and how to use AI as a learning partner in real health journeys—labs, history, differentials, and better doctor conversations. We challenge the attention economy, reframe wealth as time sovereignty, and explore why the future gets more analog—third spaces, neighbors, social skill rehab—right as robots become the next big shock to labor. We close on the only thing that really moves policy: incentives.

    You’ll learn: agency in a post-AGI world, how to brief your doctor with AI, why “neuro-spicy” processing is an edge, and where David is placing his chips next. He’s writing The Great Decoupling, building courses (with Julia McCoy), and consulting across business, academia, and policy—hubbed via his Linktree.

    Chapters

    • Optimism as a calculation
    • Vesperance & litigating AI in public
    • Health: AI as your learning partner
    • Time sovereignty > attention economy
    • The analog comeback (community & third spaces)
    • Robots: the next labor reset
    • Incentives set the guardrails

    David Shapiro Linktree: https://linktr.ee/daveshap

    SMART FUNNY TORTURED
    🌐 Learn more: smartfunnytortured.com
    📱 Follow @SmartFunnyTortured on Instagram for more.
    🧠 Join the Samrt Funny Tortured community on Skool

    Copyright © 2025 • Cerebral Itch Labs, LLC / Smart Funny Tortured • All Rights Reserved
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • SMART – Why Outsiders Are the New Geniuses

    SMART – Why Outsiders Are the New Geniuses
    Jul 11 2025

    TOPICS COVERED:

    - Jeffrey Hinton and the rise of AI irrelevance

    - Pattern recognition, synthesis, and cognitive flexibility

    - Douglas Hofstadter, Steve Jobs, Joy Buolamwini, and Tony Stark as intelligence templates

    - Why generalists win in an era of disruption

    - The Human OS for nonlinear, post-AGI thinkers

    MENTIONED THINKERS & SOURCES:

    - David Epstein – Range

    - Douglas Hofstadter – Gödel, Escher, Bach

    - Joy Buolamwini – Coded Bias

    - James Flynn – The Flynn Effect

    START HERE:

    Take the free Smart Funny Tortured Self-Audit to discover your unique intelligence blueprint:

    WATCH THE CINEMATIC EPISODE:

    Prefer visuals and storytelling? Watch the full video version on the Smart Funny Tortured YouTube channel

    TIMESTAMPS:

    00:00 – What intelligence really means now
    02:45 – Acumen, pattern recognition, and synthesis
    03:57 – The value of hybrid skill sets
    05:13 – Intelligence born from experience
    06:38 - Integration of All Three
    09:13 - Closing Thoughts

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    SMART FUNNY TORTURED
    🌐 Learn more: smartfunnytortured.com
    📱 Follow @SmartFunnyTortured on Instagram for more.
    🧠 Join the Samrt Funny Tortured community on Skool

    Copyright © 2025 • Cerebral Itch Labs, LLC / Smart Funny Tortured • All Rights Reserved
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    11 mins
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