Skepticism

[Guest Anonymous]

The way he oversimplified tulpamancy bothered me a great deal. I think the implication was that we are all simpletons who haven't considered the questions he was posing before he showed up to enlighten us. He showed a disregard to really learn anything more or actually listen to what we were trying to say.

 

I weighed the same questions he submitted myself almost eight months ago. I realized even back then that the question of sentience itself cannot be tested. That is why I have argued, several times, that the science of the forum should not focus on that question at all. I pointed that out to him in my responses, which he ignored. He ignored that there is more going on here than just "tulpas are sentient." His attitude was like none of us have ever considered those things. That is ridiculous, we argue it among each other every day. LOL It was condescending and arrogant. I should know condescending and arrogant when I see it as I myself am an expert at it. :-)

 

He also seem to be lumping us all in one group as if there is a single block of folks all in agreement about everything about tulpamancy. It shows that he didn't even really look at the debates that have raged on this forum for more than three years. The insinuation that we do not understand scientific method or the nature of the psychology involved is insulting.

[Earthquake]

Nah, I responded on super loopy, I was up for 30 hours and crashing on Adderall after a drive from Chicago to Memphis shit. Damn, I kinda started rambling in my post and I'm cringing a lil bit now but oh well. I dont know why I went on about being Jewish? I probably could have explained myself a bit better but whatever, it's done now.

 

I guess I do see similarities between believing in god and making a tulpa, and he did raise some good points about a few things.

 

I think he was just some highly opinionated atheist who discovered tulpas, read two pages and saw that we have nothing to prove them, and that was enough to him going.

 

Kinda sucks though we don't have anything to show people, and can just say you have to try it and it works, trust me.

[Guest Anonymous]

No wonder skeptics have issues with our science. The answer to this question below from in the FAQ is clearly an unsupported extraordinary claim! "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." -Carl Sagan

 

Q: Isn't this just an advanced form of hallucination?

A: A tulpa is more than just a hallucination, they're an emergent awareness and consciousness. Only the imposition of a tulpa's form is an 'advanced' hallucination.

 

Guys, in my opinion, if we want to gain respect in a scientific sense, we need to drop these unsupportable claims from the introduction and FAQ and Glossary. They are unsupportable and therefore gibberish scientifically. No wonder these guys coming in with issues with the label "For Science!" when we are doing this. I have had a problem with it from day one. I am not saying that it isn't plausible and that you are all not experiencing it, I am just saying that a science forum cannot be making unsupported extraordinary claims and assumptions. We cannot do that and still claim to be a science forum! Flat out! Can't.

---

Q: What can a tulpa do?

A: A tulpa can think independantly from its creator, can have different opinions, views, tastes, etc. from its creator, provide companionship, talk directly to anyone inside the same body (including its creator and other tulpas), control and manipulate the physical body like you, recall the memories that you have if you give them the permission and more, but basically a tulpa is a conscious mind like you and can do the same things like you can.

 

"A tulpa can think independently from its creator" Again here, simply changing this to read "A tulpa can seemingly think independently from its creator" would turn this from an unsupportable claim to something a bit less crazy sounding.

[Sock]

That's a reasonable objection there: It IS a pretty strong claim, especially considering how unsure most people in the community are, even and especially those who have the most authority here.

 

I wouldn't mind the change to reflect this uncertainty, as it would be the truth of the matter, many of us don't know if their companion is sentient, but we generally choose to trust them, as well as the feelings and indications that the inner-person we're speaking with are not us. After all, the sense of sentience and person hood isn't perceived just by words: a sense of something else being there, or a unknown thing that is not you is present in most cases.

[Guest Anonymous]

Yes, it is unsupportable scientifically and it misrepresents those within the community with a competing hypotheses concerning the nature of tulpa apparent sentience.

[waffles]

Guys, in my opinion, if we want to gain respect in a scientific sense, we need to drop these unsupportable claims from the introduction and FAQ and Glossary. They are unsupportable and therefore gibberish scientifically. No wonder these guys coming in with issues with the label "For Science!" when we are doing this.

 

The whole 'science' thing is interesting but to those who have had any exposure to actual science it's obvious anyway that a discussion forum filled with people who have only a layman's understanding of the various fields that might be relevant is not going to be tackling hard problems. That's not to say it's not a good aspiration, or that scientific methods in broad shouldn't affect how we approach things. But what it means is that we are going to be seriously low on assertions to make if we limit ourselves to those that are "supportable" in a modern scientific sense, because we don't really have any.

 

I guarantee you, this is the least of our crimes committed under the banner of "For science". It's not "gibberish" and not even that bad. To people like Sea (I'm guessing), it's no better if we use weaker language but then go about or business as usual, because while he initially painted himself as someone who's taken a rational interest, I think he betrayed the untruth of this later on.

 

 

"A tulpa can think independently from its creator" Again here, simply changing this to read "A tulpa can seemingly think independently from its creator" would turn this from an unsupportable claim to something a bit less crazy sounding.

 

I wouldn't let Sea colour your views too much. It's supposed to be an FAQ for everyone, and if someone's interested in splitting hairs about that kind of thing they can find out about it in plenty of other places. Actually, making a big show of saying "seemingly" all the time might seem like prudence to some, but if you're not interested in exacting standards of proof it probably comes off as overly cautious.

 

In principle, though, I agree with you. That's the more technically accurate statement. It's language I tend to use. But I'm cautious of overcaution.

 

 

That's a reasonable objection there: It IS a pretty strong claim, especially considering how unsure most people in the community are, even and especially those who have the most authority here.

 

Most people in the community are not actually that unsure. If the question is posed in an abstract context, sure, everyone can happily roll up their sleeves, plunge their arms into the filthy waters of arationality, and emerge with clumps of uncertainty and justification. But at the end of the day, very few people treat their tulpas as anything less than sentient. In a sense, that kind of epistemological dualthink is what most people do when confronted with hard abstract questions - have great fun talking about them, and then forget about them when they get back to doing whatever they were doing before.

 

I'm not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing. But being aware of that, there are two sides that you can present to people outside the community: the unconcerned pragmatic "tulpas are sentient" side; and the cautious, 'scientific' "tulpas may be sentient maybe not that standard of proof is unattainable at this time" side. That's not to say you need to pick one and use it exclusively, but if you have to write a three-sentence blurb there's only room for one.

 

I think it's far more important to make it clear exactly what's going on here, because that's what I see way more people being a bit unsure about: what's it like to have a tulpa, do they really talk by their own, etc. It's worth making possibly overstrong conclusions to correctly and clearly convey what having a tulpa is, or is like.

 

 

Yes, it is unsupportable scientifically and it misrepresents those within the community with a competing hypothesis concerning the nature of tulpa apparent sentience.

 

As you well know, I hate opinions and I will tell you any day of the week that holding a hypothesis doesn't entitle you to it, much less its representation. But it's irrelevant anyway, because what I'm suggesting is that it's not a good idea to present a rigid agnostic stance everywhere.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong about this. But I'm saying is - which means it's time for a

TL;DR:

• The only skeptic that tries to read a community's detailed views from a few sentences on the front page is one who isn't trying very hard. You don't need to obfuscate your message for a few people who will jump wildly to conclusions on it (or held those conclusions already).
  
• The forum may be nominally under 'scientific' methods as far as inquiry goes, but in practice most of the productive things we do is relay experiences. It is not useful to try to use academic levels of epistemic rigour all the time or even a lot of the time.
  

[Guest Anonymous]

TL;DR:

• The only skeptic that tries to read a community's detailed views from a few sentences on the front page is one who isn't trying very hard. You don't need to obfuscate your message for a few people who will jump wildly to conclusions on it (or held those conclusions already).
  
• The forum may be nominally under 'scientific' methods as far as inquiry goes, but in practice most of the productive things we do is relay experiences. It is not useful to try to use academic levels of epistemic rigour all the time or even a lot of the time.
  

 

Okay. I guess that is settled.

 

"epistemological dualthink" this describes Melian and I perfectly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism

[Lacquer]

So would anyone be willing to type up a summary of what tulpa.info should change in its main page due to the sorts of questions and discussions in this thread? Or another way to phrase it, prepare for another Sea?

[Yakumo]

The forum may be nominally under 'scientific' methods as far as inquiry goes' date=' but in practice most of the productive things we do is relay experiences. It is not useful to try to use academic levels of epistemic rigour all the time or even a lot of the time.[/quote']

I think this is an important point.

As I have stated before we should not overburden ourselves with trying to constantly keep up an academic discussion. Let's face it, this is an internet forum and in my view its main purpose should be to allow an exchange of experiences between like-minded individuals. And - equally important - to have fun together.

This is what this place can be. A great place.

But expecting it to be a platform for academic research of a phenomenon sitting on the very edge of current technological and philosophical limits is an overkill that does no one any good.

Also it has never been clear to me how exactly 'scientific' is supposed to be defined in context of this forum anyway. And clear definitions are one of the most important things when it comes to dealing with both philosophical and scientific problems. Pleeb has given some decent suggestions in the research section but I don't have the feeling many people actually read them. But they definitely could be improved.

 

Point is, I think we should try to uphold different standards in different sections of the forum.

Sharing our subjective experiences and trying to help others based on the collective empirical 'knowledge'[*] we have obtained seems feasible for most sections of the forum. Dealing with epistemological or other philosophical problems is not required in order to become a successful tulpamancer, just as a bird can fly without having a concept of aerodynamics.

[*]'Knowledge' as in 'properly justified beliefs'. In the end it does not matter if what we believe is actually correct or not, as long as it leads to the desired results.

 

I made an extra thread about my proposal for an improved Research section here.

 

And of course there is the Metaphysics and Parapsychology section which l can't really comment on. But I think it also should have a framework of standards and guidelines, otherwise it would just be a graveyard for topics affected by the rule against baseless claims.

[Brassow]

So would anyone be willing to type up a summary of what tulpa.info should change in its main page due to the sorts of questions and discussions in this thread? Or another way to phrase it, prepare for another Sea?

It's simple. You can't. There isn't a solid piece of evidence we can show someone. Whether they choose to believe us is up to them.