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Thoughts on tulpa creation?


J.Iscariot

What are your thoughts on creating tulpas for selfish reasons?  

26 members have voted

  1. 1. What are your thoughts on creating tulpas for selfish reasons?

    • I strongly oppose tulpa creation in that sense. We are creating complex beings and should not take advantage of them for our own goals.
    • I am slightly annoyed by the mentality, but it would be hypocritical of me to judge, so I allow for others what I allow for myself.
    • I feel completely neutral in regards to tulpa creation in that sense. People can do whatever they want to do regardless of how it may affect the tulpa, hosts know better.
    • I feel like you should be able to create a tulpa for any reason at all, I slightly adhere to this ideology.
    • I completely agree with tulpa creation for those reasons. It's your mind, you can do whatever you want with it.


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No tulpa is definitely a loss. If you end up with giving in to intrusive thoughts or some forms of self-deception... do you realize the enormous amount of time you lost out on in which you could have done productive stuff?

 

Well, that in itself seems pretty light. Wasting a couple of months of hobby time (it's not a full-time thing) isn't really all that bad. Arguably that's pretty normal. In any case I wouldn't assign all that much moral weight to it either way; and whether or not you're more likely to end up wasting your time making a tulpa for some reasons than others is another question still.

 

For what Sock said, yeah, the minimum wage argument doesn't really hold. It's a false economy, you're not actually skipping work to force, and you're not getting paid either way. At worst, you miss out on doing other productive things, but more likely you're missing out on watching TV or doing stuff with friends or playing video games or whatever. That's maybe making a bit of an unfair assumption about people here, I don't know.

 

 

A bad situation is forcing the tulpa to do stuff that it may not want to do. For instance, to fulfill the host's infatuation in a certain concept, to make the tulpa do certain things that may be against what they'd really want without expressing it, hurting your tulpa through actions you are not aware are actually harmful (and yes, this happened to many people, I'm the proof of it too.). It CAN happen. You just don't hear about it because people feel too shitty to tell others about it. Or they end up dissipating the beautiful things they had in their minds after a misunderstanding. An intrusive thought. A close one noticing some out of the norm activity and making remarks about it, and going as far as to forcing you to attend a psychiatry clinic. It happened. Tulpas going 'rogue' and making their hosts go through a world of pain and pure delusion (koomer-jake/vinyl). It happened too. We cannot consider that 'oh, you don't hear about those often so those are outliers.' The biggest mistake one can make, as a matter of fact, is to consider that you can dismiss all negative cases because nobody is speaking of them actively

 

Yeah, I see what you mean. That makes more sense for what you're thinking. For what it's worth, I do think they're outliers, but that's not to say they don't matter, or should be dismissed. I don't really know how often they happen though, and, again, how bad. The moral calculus is hard to do when it's unclear. How common do you think this stuff is, in terms of what proportion of people will have serious issues like this?

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@OP

 

Whether we structure selfish in a neutral context vs. one of negative connotations, it doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe seeing “selfish” as actively dismissing another’s needs might seem convincing, but if we’re talking about self-referential endeavors like treating a tulpa as sentient, it seems finding unselfish reasons becomes a red herring. Because pointing out certain benefits of a given course of action doesn’t necessarily mean it automatically becomes selfish.

 

Treating a tulpa as sentient seems to imply that the individual has to actively figure out, i.e., taking a course of action(s), what is in the best interest in contributing towards development of sentience—implied, or otherwise. Although the ethics involved in that may not be sound for others (because normative ethics’ mileage is going to vary from person to person), there is a consideration of the stake of another’s needs. Selfish in this context would be an active dismissal of another’s needs, which would essentially negate further intentions to treat a tulpa as sentient.

 

If anything, an extreme dismissal of another’s needs would be adopting dead-end worldviews (e.g. fatalism, negative applications of nihilism) that promote the idea that it’s meaningless to be thoughtful of another’s needs. Adding instinct into the topic is going to cloud one’s judgement even more since we can’t just separate ourselves from certain predispositions—one just has to come to terms with them, and find a way to work with it.

 

Unless the concept of treating a tulpa as sentient can flourish with a host actively dismissing the stake of another’s needs (the tulpa), the whole slew of options here is a red herring to me. That’s like saying that there’s no need for the host to take a course of action, and having to consciously figure out what is in the best interest for the tulpa. Insta-bake tulpas all over the place, man; no spaghetti sauce required.

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Well those are sucky poll options. I voted for four and five but I don't like the poll as a whole. Oversimplifying is bad, and that middle answer annoys me to no end.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Though some selfish reasons for creating a tulpa seem to irk me at times, it doesn't really matter in the end. What matters to me is if the tulpa is cared for once it has been created.

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Well, that in itself seems pretty light. Wasting a couple of months of hobby time (it's not a full-time thing) isn't really all that bad. Arguably that's pretty normal.

 

I would disagree because people who are actually really dedicated into tulpa creation assign it hours of their daytime, be it passive or active forcing. Not only is it the 'time' people put in but it's also the effort they need to put forth, creating a tulpa isn't as easy as some dude on reddit hearing voices in his head and completely dodging all type of hallucinations or dissociation complexes and just goes for 'oh I have a tulpa now', you out of all people must know that this used to be respected much more in the past. It's bad, at least to me, if you end up failing and not learning anything from it.

 

The wage argument was a poor one but the point I wanted to present is the following; if you are practicing an activity in which you want to benefit, if you are not doing it the most profitable way possible, if you're not doing all you can to profit in a reasonable scenario, then you are losing out. This, in my opinion, does not apply to things such as games or anything 'pleasurable' in those ways of distraction because the end-result will be you distracted. That is a positive outcome. If you can have 'more' fun doing something, and if you WANT to have more fun and are tired of the same old game, the rational decision to take would be to try to reach this higher goal of yours. This concept does not apply to games as long as you are satisfied, and tulpamancy is far more complicated than this line of reasoning. The point is that if you have time that is to be dedicated to creating a sentient being in your mind, if you obtain any less, then this is a loss. If a company opens its doors, with free power and monthly rent, and if it has no sales, the company is losing out. Same thing with the human mind; if you have time on your hands, and if you put forth a lot of effort and end up with nothing, you're in a loss.

 

 

How common do you think this stuff is, in terms of what proportion of people will have serious issues like this?

 

Well just as you said there is no viable source for how many tulpamancers are facing certain difficult circumstances. The ones we know of originally came on the forum with absolutely nothing wrong and left with a world of mistakes on their road, not mistakes in my books but in a general moral and evaluative line of reasoning. Tons of people come on the forums, don't actually post or contribute and give tulpamancy a shot, which is absolutely normal and fine, which is why you don't hear of them if something 'bad' happens with them. I literally heard of a tulpa getting raped by another thoughtform in some system on another community (even though it sounds very... strange, giving the benefit of doubt is the most respectful thing I can do in this situation). Don't forget about the tulpas who actually do spend their entire days on chats like .im and talk kinky and end up being rp-tools for their hosts for the sake of acceptance and validation on a social level on the internet, because that's the only thing they experience. Someone once told me that in each and every one of us, in this era at least, there was a bit of crazy going on about, and that made a world of sense; we should not only look at the issues that happen WITH tulpas, but the issues that go on with the minds they inhabit. An unhealthy mind can cause a world of ordeals for a tulpa or numerous thoughtforms in groups. To answer your question, though, I think that there are quite a few cases out there that we don't really hear of. The people who faced problems ended up quitting and calling us deluded and our tulpas imaginary friends; that is understandable, they probably wanted to set a distance between their identity and this concept, the one that brought them such anguish at a certain point. We'll never be able to pin down the frequency of those cases because people are not going to just tell you or me about how they had a bad time with a tulpa. This place is known for its rainbow-sunshine mood (until, well, lately) and if someone just came on here with a world of drama behind them (*cough* like someone who used to post quite often on here but ended up deleting their thread because too much laughter and humiliation directed at them), people aren't going to just accept it. And the admins, the moderators of this community would definitely not be okay with people who had issues giving the community and phenomenon a bad image, because they'd consider them outliers.

A wise man once said: 'Before judging a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got new shoes.'

 

Graced are those who could avoid this phenomenon. This is perhaps the worst expression of evil in humanity's history, but who am I to judge?

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I would disagree because people who are actually really dedicated into tulpa creation assign it hours of their daytime, be it passive or active forcing. Not only is it the 'time' people put in but it's also the effort they need to put forth [...] you out of all people must know that this used to be respected much more in the past. It's bad, at least to me, if you end up failing and not learning anything from it.

 

Well of course it depends on how much you do exactly. But yeah, I did this stuff "when it was hard" as you might say, but I think my reaction to that time being wasted in itself would be more of "oh well" than tragedy. Of course it'd be disappointing in other ways. And like you kind of imply, that's more true now than it was before; although looking at trends in creation time it's not really like that anyway:

450x300http://i.imgur.com/C3SSl5p.png[/img]

 

 

If a company opens its doors, with free power and monthly rent, and if it has no sales, the company is losing out. Same thing with the human mind; if you have time on your hands, and if you put forth a lot of effort and end up with nothing, you're in a loss.

 

It's not quite like that. The issue at hand is a counterfactual, a what-if scenario. The "loss" made by the company is made relative to the company never opening its doors in the first place; this is not an option for a human. You will always be doing something, and the question is only whether making a tulpa is more or less profitable than what you would be doing otherwise. It's not an important issue I guess, but I do think that, for instance in my case, had I not started creation I wouldn't have done anything particularly profitable with that time anyway.

 

 

Regarding people meeting difficulties,

We'll never be able to pin down the frequency of those cases because people are not going to just tell you or me about how they had a bad time with a tulpa.

This is what I'm not sure about. It's really hard to verify by nature, but it does come down to guessing whether people are more or less likely to talk about particular circumstances. For the "RP-tool" end, I think if anything you'd see that disproportionately often, while for others I guess less so. Estimating how many people just fail might be easier given a systematic survey, but less useful in itself.

 

It's something I've wondered about a few times recently, what kind of failure rate there is here. I'm not even sure what fraction of people who note their progress down succeed or fail; I used to think it was the case that most people, 90% or so, succeeded, but now I don't think there's much basis for that. It could be more like 50%. And I think a lot of people are put off by the community here, and just take the guides and run (good on you), so for them I'm even less sure.

 

For people who have serious issues, I would hazard, I dunno, 5%? Less? For the people I can think of who have tulpas, people who don't talk about it notwithstanding. The point is just to put a rough figure on it, rather than talking about "common" and "uncommon". To me that seems an acceptable risk, given the benefits.

 

Whether that is representative of the whole story is difficult. I don't quite buy into what you say, that people with negative experiences are shown the door, by the community at large or by staff. It's more that people with implausible ones are; and I think I'd be more willing to let those stay than most, but even so, at some point you have to consider that people who come in with horror stories aren't being honest.

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In the scenario I am discussing, the company would have opened its doors and got no sales in the first month, due to either poor product quality, customer service or support management, or many other factors (which is why you're eventfully right with the 'what if' argument.). Still, I believe that there may be some similarities between this and that, I do admit that you are right in the sense that the human mind is consistently doing something, learning from it (heck, if you learn about how wrong you were in the past, that's still some gain). It very much is a what-if scenario, which is why we cannot pin down whether this is actually a 'waste' of time in subjective lights, but in the case that you are busy irl and dedicate long amounts of time to tulpamancy (which is something one should reconsider in the first place), the concept could apply. But I won't push onto this as you've already made a good point that has its own reflection as a 'what-if' scenario, the conditional probabilities that can be pushed on are numerous so yeah good point.

 

50% could be a good and valid guess for all we know. I'm not inclined towards picking a lower % from how it was before due to any bias I may hold against the overall plural community on the internet, but because it is apparent that many factors affected this practice to the point of making it.... something else, in some ways. I find it interesting that some people write progress reports and never come back after a few posts or even pages, but you don't see much of that these days, so that cannot stand properly. I like your concept of risk/benefit, so I'll adhere to that ideology as well.

 

I am not saying that those people 'are' shown the door. Multiple factors may pile up, the first may be the image they are given in sharing their experiences; the other side of the rainbow, you know the one where the dwarf or whatever creature turns souls into quant- you get it. I was hypothesizing that the staff and pro-tulpa folks would oppose posting about such cases because it gives a negative image to the community. Koomer is shown to newbies to tell them that they shouldn't fuck up like him, because you only have ONE Koomer. If you had 5 Koomers this community would look like a dramawhore's repository, as much as I deeply dislike this term, and am sorrowfully employing it, that's how it is. But there are many systems and people who failed where they should not have, for reasons they could not fight (predisposition to mental illness, troubled social grounds, domestic abuse, overactive stress, major depression, etc...). People who come with horror stories and improbable stories alike should be disregarded. Why? Because first they won't benefit anything from posting instead people telling them 'go see a doctor we cannot help you', second because it truly DOES give this practice a bad image (something the creepypastas fail to do, as a matter of fact, I've seen more people get into this practice after reading about all the creepypastas and stories, knowing they are fake), and third, c'mon, what ARE the odds of any of what they say being real and not just extreme paranoia mixed with a mental illness of theirs? What I was speaking of, though, was a continuous type of description to one's tough and hard circumstances. One way, you have people who openly mock those conditions (and it did happen - people are allowed to laugh but you should not enforce your laughter on someone, keeping it to yourself is better overall)(generic you), mocking in a way that it becomes discouraging every writing session. Even worse when it's *cough* *cough* a tulpa with no other place to write on.*cough*

It is not about the type of humiliation they will go through, but the image they will also give to the community, that 'oh, this is something serious, this is something we as a community need to look out for', if someone does not post for the purpose of dramawhoring with improbable cases, a typical system gone wrong in the distress of life, this experience can help other people avoid such bad things, others to relate and empathize, others to sympathize with one's situation and understand that there 'are' bad things in tulpamancy. We don't tell newcomers about the risks, it's as if making a person in your head would have absolutely no effect and risk on your mind (but that is something people should deduce, I know I did). The people who depict improbable causes are and should be shown the door because they cannot benefit from this place while hurting it, but the people who depict reasonable and actually depressing and harmful situations that people 'should' look out for are not as active, and you want to know why? Because they're afraid. But that's another discussion.

 

In shorter terms I agree with the things you've said, you make a valid point and a reasonable estimation although it's still dazzling to me the number of people who don't manifest their presence and go on with a tulpa, two or three for years; as rare as it can be, and while there is nothing wrong with that, the numbers could beat our expectations. But for the moment being, I'll go with what you said.

A wise man once said: 'Before judging a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got new shoes.'

 

Graced are those who could avoid this phenomenon. This is perhaps the worst expression of evil in humanity's history, but who am I to judge?

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I was hypothesizing that the staff and pro-tulpa folks would oppose posting about such cases because it gives a negative image to the community. [...] If you had 5 Koomers this community would look like a dramawhore's repository [...] it truly DOES give this practice a bad image

 

Well just for this, I'm not sure that this is true. Done to an extreme, I guess it would be problematic in one way, but there are two points here. Firstly, 5 Koomers is pretty similar to 1, I think, in image terms. Either way you have a handful of people. I'm not being pedantic, but my point is that if the true number of people who have had bad things happen is 5 times larger than what we see, or so, then that's still not that much, not enough to make a big difference.

 

Secondly, it's an issue orthogonal to actual image issues that the community has. I don't really see the connection of serious issues -> dramawhoring; more likely, it would look dangerous instead - it wouldn't exactly compound the negative images we have now, which I think are more along the lines of being somehow deluded, or hugboxy, possibly more along your own lines of thought. That's my estimation of what other people of this demographic, be that the kind of people who are on this forum, might think. But that's hard to judge, and I'm really getting that from what other people post about the community in places such as, e.g., 4chan.

 

Still, speaking as a "staff member", I wouldn't really oppose that, at least not right now. Clearly the supposition is that we don't get enough of such posting to have a good idea of what's going on, and as far as the risks go, I would like to have an idea of what they are. Contrary to what you said, I think we do tell people about the risks, or at least try to. We may not talk about these 'serious' issues in that way because they're genuinely seen as outliers and not serious risks.

 

 

 

What I was speaking of, though, was a continuous type of description to one's tough and hard circumstances. One way, you have people who openly mock those conditions (and it did happen - people are allowed to laugh but you should not enforce your laughter on someone, keeping it to yourself is better overall)(generic you), mocking in a way that it becomes discouraging every writing session. Even worse when it's *cough* *cough* a tulpa with no other place to write on.*cough*

 

I mean, does this happen? That's kind of what I was asking before, because I don't see this happen much myself.

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It did happen in the past - at least, I am sure it did because it happened with my tulpa, which is what I was heavily implying all along. The reason it was deleted by her own will was because too much mocking took place in direct and indirect ways. Some people did send in messages saying how good it was to see a different perspective for once, but yeah. It happened long enough for it never to occur again. That, and the rule that says that you cannot use PRs as your blog in a depiction of your personal life, which would lead to the creation of a thread in the lounge (e.g melian's thread) and we know how that went. There isn't any space for serious research of such conditions because people realistically refuse to see it; the people who mock it, I mean, do it not only for the 'banters' and inner jokes they can create in an inner circle, but their mind comes to refuse this whole thing, that a tulpa 'can' be like this, because it means that, consequently, if it can happen to someone's tulpa it can also happen to yours, logically speaking and very subjectively under a certain group of conditions that can be humanly met.

 

That is a good point, but despite it not being enough to 'make a difference', such cases should not be overlooked or ignored or shunned into the pit of fuckupsthatwilltotallyneverhappentoanewbieeverinhislife. Someone realistic is going to tell a newbie what are the things that 'may' happen, using examples and logical reasoning to depict what may occur in one's mind under certain conditions (may as in a non-definitive event but a possibility). I met people who laughed at every issue my tulpa had and called it 'dramawhoring' which is why I fear that it may be regarded as such despite my opinion that it truly is not.

Truth is that such close-knitted communities can turn into a type of hugbox. Take reddit for instance; it's not inherently bad at first sight but if you go deep in it you'll understand the obvious hugbox towards a specific mod who writes so much that it would scare away anyone with a few simple questions because 'it seems smart'; much less does it seem smart than it seems like something the community likes to see. Another example could be when the big holy great war between Jake and Melian started on the forums; people took sides damn straight and it turned into something ugly due to conformism, and anti-conformism, which is to be expected at some point. Not even speaking in a negative light because that happens in, like, all communities with people who are subject to such.... relative experiences, let's put it this way. It's only that there used to be more spoiling happening on here, spoiling that should not have occurred, putting a member in a favorable position and making everyone else expressing a different opinion like someone you should 'not' listen to. It happened with Melian vs, what, everybody who ever went up against her in terms of opinions.

By such arguments I mean to put forth the point that those serious 'issues' are not mentioned to a beginner, by some people, not everyone in this community, under the fear that it would scare them off more than it is an outlier. If you show some dude Koomer's case and if this dude takes it maturely he'll understand that Koomer fucked up at some point be it on the drugs or mental health level and that he should not do things of a similar nature. Of course you're not gonna swarm a beginner with 'omg tulpa is danger tulpa is death tulpa is add', but the issue is that there is not any well-known presence of such outliers. In the TF2 trading community, outliers can be dismissed upon suggesting a price for an unusual item but it can be used by the owner to demonstrate that 'yes, in certain circumstances, this can take place' which leads to profit most of the time. The logic here is that you can use those outliers as something to educate people with, not just ignore them. (generic you again)

 

'Does this happen?' It happens where you cannot see it and when you least expect it. Yes. That was the sole reason our thread was put to an end after some reflection and realization that some people were having a fuckin' blast about it, in the negative way for 'us'. Obviously you wouldn't oppose it because you are, and with no means to flatter, one of the most rational individuals on this site, but not everyone is as accepting.

 

What I found nice was that, at some point, this guy who lurked all the time and never posted at all honored me with sending me a PM, thanking both of us for sharing that perspective, saying it taught him a lot and that he was well more aware of things at the current moment. We had a short discussion in PM, and that was the thing that made me realize 'oh shit, people can actually benefit from this!'. It can happen.

A wise man once said: 'Before judging a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got new shoes.'

 

Graced are those who could avoid this phenomenon. This is perhaps the worst expression of evil in humanity's history, but who am I to judge?

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It did happen in the past - at least, I am sure it did because it happened with my tulpa, which is what I was heavily implying all along. The reason it was deleted by her own will was because too much mocking took place in direct and indirect ways.

 

Alright. I didn't pick up on the implication, sorry. I guess that answers my question somewhat, although you'd still need to wonder to what extent that experience is typical.

 

 

That is a good point, but despite it not being enough to 'make a difference', such cases should not be overlooked or ignored or shunned into the pit of fuckupsthatwilltotallyneverhappentoanewbieeverinhislife.

 

Yeah, I meant that the other way, that it wouldn't make a difference to the image, rather than not being something we should use to inform people. Again, though, I think that the real reason for people not talking about these issues is the same reason that you were laughed at: because they're not seen as serious, perhaps possible at all, they're not important risks to warn people about.

 

I have seen people being warned about cases like Koomer's, sometimes, and I don't think those people really were scared off. Possibly it doesn't do well to scaremonger, and only inform people in a context of what could happen, e.g., if they asked about a 'worst case', rather than bringing it up prominently. I guess it's the responsible thing to do to inform people about potential risks, to some extent. Whether or not the warning would actually prevent it from happening or just ensure that everyone is informed, I don't know.

 

In that capacity, having a better idea about the frequency of these things happening is important, but for the time being I guess I'll stick by my suspicion that they're fairly uncommon, as in, a few % of the people who succeed. In truth I really don't think that people would hold those stories back; whether people would laugh them out is another matter, I guess people laughed at Koomer to some extent but he kept posting. Maybe others would leave before things got bad for them, if they were maintaining a PR, but then if they weren't, why wouldn't they come and warn about their bad experiences?

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