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Skepticism


Sea

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I love how he totally ignores my post. Honestly there is no real base for discussion if you keep believing that your brain is not capable of creating or even simulating a conscious being in your mind. We keep telling you that the tulpas reach a point of being convincing autonomous and sentient; and that we can't prove something like this to you. We're not playing puppeteer with our tulpas. We don't claim that we're our tulpas. We're not sitting in our rooms to imagine stories about them all day. Also they're no magical entity or something like that.

 

About the tulpa sentience: They react differently from your primary consciousness. We don't think "What would my tulpa think about this?", they just do. Also you claim that it would be not possible to see the difference between answers from your tulpa and your own, and you're heavily wrong about that. The consciousness of the tulpa gets more distinct over time. You don't know everything your tulpa feels or thinks. You don't know what your tulpa is going to do or say in a lot of matters. And not even when your tulpa is going to say or do something.

 

My conclusion is that you're not skeptic, you've a denying bias right from the start on these things. It is like you claim that you can't drift with a car, because you've never driven a car, but are still sure that it isn't possible. You're lacking knowledge you claim to have about the human mind. All we can do is point at it and say "try and make your own experience about it, if you like to". This has nothing to do with defending a belief, you just wish to fight one yourself.

Tulpa: Alice

Form: Realistic Humanoid/Demonic Creation

She may or may not talk here, depends on her.

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Well, the "Try and make your own experience" part would usually be a good solution. But when skepticism, or even denying bias, is here, you can't do much. The fact that tulpas rely mostly on belief mean that he won't be able to get any result, and will still be in denial about tulpas existing. It's an neverending circle where nothing positive will come out.

 

On the other hand, not thinking about skepticism/denial, making your own experience doesn't mean you'll get a tulpa or erase skepticism, it can even be worse. I believe that somebody that starts tulpamancy with doubts (which is perfectly normal) will have high chances of failure. Tulpaforcing (active and passive) are meaningless if you don't believe, and you'll just lose your time doing that. And after losing, I don't know, a month or a year, doubts will be even stronger.

 

Also, a quick point about human mind. Tulpamancers usually says :

- "Hurr durr we all have different brains, so don't follow the guides and make your own way" when guides don't work for somebody.

 

But, something that tulpamancer deny, is this statement:

- "We all have different brains, so some people may not be able to create tulpas"

 

Which is based on the same argument, that people have different brains. So, yeah, belief is really important when it comes to tulpamancy. No matter how much you force, and how you force, belief will be the key to a tulpa. And failing in the early months will just result in the incapacity in making a tulpa for the person.

Need a software to save your Tulpamancy progress ? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-software-tulpadiary

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Well, the "Try and make your own experience" part would usually be a good solution. But when skepticism, or even denying bias, is here, you can't do much. The fact that tulpas rely mostly on belief mean that he won't be able to get any result, and will still be in denial about tulpas existing. It's an neverending circle where nothing positive will come out.

 

On the other hand, not thinking about skepticism/denial, making your own experience doesn't mean you'll get a tulpa or erase skepticism, it can even be worse. I believe that somebody that starts tulpamancy with doubts (which is perfectly normal) will have high chances of failure. Tulpaforcing (active and passive) are meaningless if you don't believe, and you'll just lose your time doing that. And after losing, I don't know, a month or a year, doubts will be even stronger.

 

Also, a quick point about human mind. Tulpamancers usually says :

- "Hurr durr we all have different brains, so don't follow the guides and make your own way" when guides don't work for somebody.

 

But, something that tulpamancer deny, is this statement:

- "We all have different brains, so some people may not be able to create tulpas"

 

Which is based on the same argument, that people have different brains. So, yeah, belief is really important when it comes to tulpamancy. No matter how much you force, and how you force, belief will be the key to a tulpa. And failing in the early months will just result in the incapacity in making a tulpa for the person.

 

I don't think faith is all that necessary, but being skeptic all the time is surely obstructing for the development. Staying in deny pretty much kills all changes of creating a tulpa, but beside that I don't really think there are much scenarios where it is total impossible to create a tulpa. I don't think someone really can get incapable of creating a tulpa, they just lose interest in it, which is okay. Real failing appears impossible for me.

 

About the guides: I like to say that every tulpa development is unique, so you should feel free to deviate from it, if something doesn't appear to work for you. Guides are just guidepost, no fixed rules to follow.

 

In any case I think nobody should create a tulpa just to prove a point, especially when he really tries not to create one at the same time. If it works it get's uncomfortable for the host and the tulpa. If it doesn't work he is going to say "Told you so."

Tulpa: Alice

Form: Realistic Humanoid/Demonic Creation

She may or may not talk here, depends on her.

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Things that i think make best arguments for existance of tulpas are switching, parallel processing, and that a newborn human baby operates completely on instincts untill its interacted with enough including treated as sentient(Read up on feral children and children dying without social interactions).

 

Parallel processing makes sense in a way that logically early on tulpas share most of the neural network with hosts, to actually develop parallel processing you need to train it sort of like having them relearn the thing only with a bit more knowledge at the start.

 

We are VERY far away from actually proving that tulpas are real, sure a brain scan can have some kind of results, but i'm sure that any of those results could be emulated in more ways then just a tulpa beeing there. So first we need to progress our neuroscience quite a bit more and define how much exactly you can cut off untill a person is not a person, then we would need alot of test subjects and money and only then can we do an actually conclusive test that is 100% true.

 

On the topic of belief: My theory on what the rough "Tulpa equation" is, is .Time*Hosts belief system. and later on .Time*(Hosts belief system+tulpas belief system). (Belief system consisting not only of the perceived beliefs but also of subconcious ones)

Shade is the tulpa, [stuff]=her. Her form is: pegasus mlp pony with dark grey coat and black mane and tail.

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Sea, you seem to have strong preconceptions as to what's going on:

You want to imagine that Tulpas are real so you "talk to" the Tulpas and that's somehow it's proof in your mind of their existence when you're just talking to yourself.

 

Forget about it. Don't conflate the somewhat philosophical question of "Are tulpas sentient" with "Are you not talking to yourself". I see people here doing that, actually, or at least answering the general "is it real question" with the sentience one. Lumi, I guess. That said I agree with the gist of what most other people said, though I'd rather state it a bit more clearly.

 

 

As far as the second question goes, no. We can make it quite clear exactly what we're experiencing when it comes to tulpas, or at least what most are. Autonomy and independence is the key here; tulpas' speech is not willed or effected by 'us' as we are aware, so saying "we are talking to ourselves" is shifting the definition of "us" to include something that is not "us" as we experience it.

 

There are other auxiliary questions. Are we mistaken in our experiences? Lying? It's not a conspiracy, making tulpas has a remarkably high success rate if it's something that is essentially a mistake of judgement. Ultimately I can only tell you that, "no, we're not wrong about this", but as a supporting point making a tulpa does not deprive you of your ability to distinguish this kind of thing. If anything, in my experience, it tends to make your inner perceptions sharper in general.

 

 

The comparison to religion is interesting but in practice they're pretty different. Faith in religion is supposed to keep you going until you die, whereas faith in tulpas only needs to last you until you have a tulpa. In that sense it's more like "confidence". The existence of God is some kind of philosophical thing that you might make 'logical' arguments for, as opposed to just doing things and getting experiences and calling those experiences a "tulpa".

 

That kind of conflation between logic and empiricism is something you did here:

The argument that thinking about an imaginary character makes it sentient is illogical. When you spend enough time imagining stories they become more in depth but it's not grounds to declare them to be sentient being.

It's not a logical argument, it's an empirical statement. Thinking about imaginary characters enough in certain ways can make tulpas. This is bourne out by the experiences of people here. And in the pages you quoted tulpas=sentient I guess, but that's an assertion.

 

 

Besides, like None said, faith isn't super important anyway. You might have a hard time if you're a die-hard sceptic but otherwise you don't have to be a fanatic.

 

And actually, it's a bit of a step down to say that faith is the only argument you can make for the phenomenon being legit. Here we are with a load of methods that lots of curious people have tried and been successful in. In a sane world that says, with a fair confidence, that the methods work. You should have some strong prior beliefs to look at all that and conclude, "No, all these people are wrong about it."

 

 

The sentience question is a little difficult. I don't agree with Lumi that the question isn't meaningful. Actually, I think if the neurology of tulpas was well-understood in general the answer would be obvious. It isn't, but that doesn't make it less a question of science, so I'll abstain. That said, when it comes to switching and stuff, it sure seems like tulpas and hosts are interchangeable, like nivereno said.

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Guest Anonymous

EEGs and MRIs won't prove sentience. They will only show that the brain is active in certain areas when you are thinking or convincing yourself the tulpa is thinking. There is no way to scientifically prove a tulpa is sentient and I doubt there ever will be.

 

Of course they exist, or we wouldn't be even having this conversation. Tulpas definitely exist. Imaginary friends and dream personas also exist. A purple gorilla exists in my mind too when I imagine it. I see it right now in my imagination jumping up and down and demanding a banana.

 

The belief in tulpa sentience is a matter of faith and proto-religious in nature. I have said for a long time that sentience should not be a central theme or premise of this forum if it is to be a scientific discussion. The methodology and causation of apparent autonomy and the ability to induce your own hallucinations. That should be the central question. Can a person self induce their own believable hallucinations?

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A purple gorilla exists in my mind too when I imagine it.

 

That's misinterpreting what this thread is about. He's asking about the distinction between the supposedly autonomous and sapient tulpa versus something like your purple gorilla which is obviously just you imagining an image of something.

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Imaginary friends and dream personas also exist. A purple gorilla exists in my mind too when I imagine it. I see it right now in my imagination jumping up and down and demanding a banana.

 

Your view on this is pretty much oversimplifying as usual, but i guess you basically want to say something similiar as Lumi here.

 

The belief in tulpa sentience is a matter of faith and proto-religious in nature. I have said for a long time that sentience should not be a central theme or premise of this forum if it is to be a scientific discussion. The methodology and causation of apparent autonomy and the ability to induce your own hallucinations. That should be the central question. Can a person self induce their own believable hallucinations?

 

I don't really feel like agreeing with you here. The belief that a tulpa is really sentient is of course based on faith, we can only be sure that it appears like they're truly sentient. That they atleast appear as truly sentient is based on observation und experience, so no faith involved here.

Tulpa: Alice

Form: Realistic Humanoid/Demonic Creation

She may or may not talk here, depends on her.

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There is no known method to prove sentience of an imaginary image. Tulpas are also imagined by the mind. It may be an "autonomous" vision, but it is the same thing essentially. That was the point I was making. I didn't misinterpret the OP.

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Everyone knows that everyone can imagine the image of a purple gorilla in the mind. What the tulpa.info homepage and FAQ that OP read said is that there is an important distinction between this imagined image of a purple gorilla and a tulpa. The OP is disputing this distinction.

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