Do you consider your own tulpa(s) to be independently sentient?

[waffles]

Mistgod and I am coming to the final conclusion from this that tulpamancers themselves are completely and utterly clueless, but only pretend they are not. It is an epiphany. There is no way to talk about tulpas in a useful and productive way from what I can see. It's not that we are not doing it properly at all, it is that there is in fact, no way to do it that will be in any way satisfactory.

 

Yes, I agree with Stevie. There are useful ways to talk about tulpas, and I wrote several paragraphs outlining just that on the previous page in (what I hope is) a reasonably clear way. Frankly, you can spare us all your conclusion and keep it to yourself. Some people may be clueless, you may count yourself among that.

 

 

And Tewi, in that quote, is saying that few things are factual. Well... I have no context for that quote, I don't know what you perceive as people getting angry about your opinions. But, like, no. You may be right in a vacuous sense but there's no particular reason why we can't talk about tulpas in the same ways as we can talk about other mental phenomena, like, say, dreams, or, I don't know, psychiatric conditions. There are fields full of people who talk about factuals in relations to mental processes!

 

I don't really know, although I'm sure I've heard you or someone else justify this before, why they behave as if, because we're talking about tulpas, we've stepped into this other realm in which facts don't exist and opinions are all we have. Well, no, we don't really know very much, but if you don't really have many facts at hand, that's your fault. Some of us here look at "we don't know much about tulpas" and think "how can we find out more?", and maybe others respond with "so my opinion is all we have". Look, I don't mean to misrepresent what you're saying here. Maybe you're just saying something something I don't know that's not really this or interesting.

 

 

My point is this: if you think that

• People in the community use language in ambiguous and inadequate ways
  
• We don't know enough about tulpas
  

Then... We agree, great, except for some reason I take away from this, "I want to use language in useful ways and get other people to, and I want to discuss stuff seriously and learn more". And other people seem to conclude, "So no-one has any idea, let's all have some tea." Okay. We're on the same team here, guys, if you think we're clueless then, well, that's a problem! We should be fixing that.

 

Saying what you said about subjective experiences is just saying that you don't care about, well, finding things out. If all you actually care about is improving experiences then only in an oblique sense is it useful to have true knowledge in the first place. If that's how you feel then I don't really think that you're qualified to inform anyone who actually does care about, you know, truth and that stuff.

[Guest Anonymous]

Maybe some people think that Mistgod and I are not learning, but we damn sure are. Every once in a while a light bulb goes on. All this time we had this view that the senior people here knew something about the nature of tulpas. They simply don't. They just don't and that is really profound for us right now. I know it sounds stupid but ... well.

 

I still respect people for having successfully created tulpas and I know they are sincere and they know what works and what doesn't work for creating them. THAT is the real value of this forum. But the rest is blabber babble, total complete meaningless blabber babble. No one knows a damned thing for sure.

 

And then they sit on high and argue semantics and language and act like I am being unreasonable or that I am somehow clueless compared to them. It is a total joke. I love everyone here, including my dear waffles. I don't want to offend anyone, I consider you all my friends, but you guys are actually clueless.

[waffles]

I take a few issues with that. Firstly, I said nothing about how tulpas work! You don't know what I think about the nature of tulpas because ... I didn't say anything about it. So, I don't know what you're making this conclusion on, because it sure as hell wasn't anything I said here. Except for some pretty obvious things that I don't think anyone would really disagree with.

 

No, yes, I was indeed arguing language. Yes, you are unreasonable. Clueless is harsh, but I don't think that you know how to use language usefully here. And, well, it doesn't really help that you draw impossible conclusions.

[Guest Anonymous]

I am taking a break from this conversation because I am not feeling reasonable, I am getting Melian style emotional and irrational. We all know where that leads. I don't want a warning or a ban over something so useless.

 

I d'nt mean to offend you I am sorry waffles. I am just frustrated. The truth is I am not smart enough to talk about this stuff. It is out of the capability of Mistgod and I. We are in the wrong ground on this subject and I will move on to other things and leave it alone. I don't understand what you guys are talking about when you split hairs on terminology and I get frustrated.

 

I don't understand you and all the existential mumbo jumbo and philosophy. We are trying to figure it out in our own way but we just can't seem to get there. I don't know what you mean about independence and sentience not going together. You confused me and I can't understand what you mean. Mistgod and I spent a year getting to this point and you undo what we thought we knew in five minutes.

 

It all seems like meaningless jargon at this point. That is what I mean. No one seems to be able to put anything in a clear concise understandable way. To me, that is a red flag that it is something that defies meaning.

 

So I am done with that forever. I will talk about other things and leave the nature of tulpas to someone else to argue about.

[Tewi]

I don't really know, although I'm sure I've heard you or someone else justify this before, why they behave as if, because we're talking about tulpas, we've stepped into this other realm in which facts don't exist and opinions are all we have. Well, no, we don't really know very much, but if you don't really have many facts at hand, that's your fault.

 

If someone were to, say, create a thread discussing sentience, and ask me if I think I or other tulpas are sentient - it's my fault that I have no facts at hand to answer that? We don't generally discuss facts here. Even when we do, the facts are usually about quantifying what people believe, ie not facts.

 

At no point did I mean to imply anything wrong with what we do, and the quote was moreso adding on to Melian's post before it, not any kind of argument. There'd be no problem with this lack of facts - if people hadn't told me in the past that I was speaking "too matter-of-factly". Everyone should agree as soon as they access this site that that is impossible. My facts are just personal, subjective truths, and so are everyone else's when it comes to all this theorizing about the nature of tulpas.

 

o·pin·ion

noun

a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

the beliefs or views of a large number or majority of people about a particular thing.

 

I use the term opinion synonymously with "belief" and related terms on occasion because that's what they are. I do not use the term to say "Things people think are true but aren't", if that's how you took it. We discuss opinions here, we discuss beliefs here. What we don't have is objective truths; what we do have is reports of experiences that come from certain beliefs. And with a whole lot of those reports of experience, we can piece together common cause-and-effect of those beliefs, and from there we can perhaps build a system of beliefs that generally results in the most positive experiences overall. Of course, what everyone wants out of their experience differs, so we don't have some written list of "Believe this, it's the best thing to believe" as much as discussions garnering lots of different sets of beliefs that people say have worked for them in such ways. So everyone's free to pick and choose their beliefs, with ones we've determined as generally helpful appearing more prominently.

 

Unfortunately, a lot of people think they're learning "facts", "bests" and so on, and that causes trouble. And by trouble I mean arguments I guess, and arguments are not discussions.

 

Also, when we get into more serious discussions (the dissipation thread is a good example), the way I see it, we aren't just discussing these could-be optimal beliefs on an individual basis, we're discussing them in the context of "overall best/most positive/most helpful" or something like that. Those threads aren't as much for saying "This is how I think, do with that what you will" like most are, they're more "This is what I think - does anyone think they think better? Let's compare."

 

I like those, I think they're very productive. But to some they border too close to "discussing facts", and I've heard numerous people complain that we're "forcing our beliefs" or "stating our opinions as fact", and so on. This bugs me a lot, and it does happen.

 

 

Did that explain everything? I don't want any arguing. I prefer discussion.

[Guest Anonymous]

Why do all of my threads end in arguments? I don't mean them to. I thought it was a good poll but it stinks. I am going now. You guys have a good day and I will talk to you all later. I need to think about what kinds of things we can talk about that will be meaningful and actually maybe helpful to someone instead of just more and more of this stuff that never ends. It might be there just isn't anything meaningful or useful for Mistgod and I to talk about.

[waffles]

Melian, okay, I guess. I didn't take offence, and you don't need to leave in a huff. If you don't understand, then, okay, but it doesn't really help anyone to just throw your hands up about it. It'd be easier if you said what it was you didn't understand, specifically. But I guess it's probably not worth it. And when you say you're "done forever" you don't usually mean it.

 

 

 

Tewi, yeah, it seems reasonably explained. I keep running against this thing, and it's the idea of picking and choosing beliefs. It's not that I don't think that it's useful - yes, it is, I definitely think that people making tulpas may be better served to believe things which are not, as we see it, the most likely. But we're not really that, I guess. Personally, I already made a tulpa, I don't really need the bromide any more. I'd like to ask questions about what's true, not what are the most helpful beliefs to progress.

 

This is the point of, uh, discussion, I think. As I said before, if you don't really want to know the truth and just want beliefs that make you happy, then I respect that, and I'll say that that's not personally what I want; I want the truth, who ordered the code red?? And I think those two approaches are mutually incompatible, at least philosophically, but it's not something I can argue with you, it makes sense. So that's be my agree to disagree.

 

 

In the practical sense I reckon that, while the optimal beliefs for having nice tulpa experiences aren't true ones, true ones would do people better than what we have now. Maybe not you, admittedly, but others. It would help to have a solid idea of what actually gets the job done, rather than our somewhat unclear view of what seems to work. Contrary to what Melian said, I don't really think that we do know all that well what works and what doesn't. We know what has worked for some people, and what hasn't worked for some people ... but not really much else.

 

Anyway, Tewi, I don't know who's told you that you speak too factually or why. Personally I think that if you want to guard against that, you should do as I do - sprinkle your writing with "I think"s like so many Hundreds and Thousands - and not alter your outlook too much about what our aims should be. Picking on something like that is a bit silly, because it's so much more interesting to ask why someone is stating something, rather than telling them that they shouldn't state things at all. So if anyone tells you that you're being too factual, tell them that they're not contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way, I guess.

 

The reason that I'm essentially not convinced by what you say is that your description, while true, is applicable to almost anything. Yes, we don't have objective truth, that's for the philosophers. Yes, we're generalising experiences and piecing together causality, and what everyone says is just subjective when it comes to theory. But this could be any field you're talking about; which brings me to my tldr, which is we lack rigour but that's because we're a bunch of armchair forum posters, not because of anything inherent in tulpas.

 

 

I don't really want to argue either, but

I don't really know the difference between a discussion and an argument

, so your mileage may vary.

[Tewi]

We took an English class that was literally all about "Writing in an Argumentative Mode", so it kinda got hammered into us what the difference was. But I should think people in general can feel the difference in how they tend to be used. An argument implies ... Well, Google's two definitions sum it up perfectly.

 

ar·gu·ment

noun

an exchange of diverging or opposite views, typically a heated or angry one.

a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.

 

The first is the definition I expect people to just kind of know. The latter is the technical definition. It implies not talking to learn, but to convince. Arguing is not generally productive in a learning environment. Discussion on the other hand, is "the action or process of talking about something, typically in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas."

 

 

With that out of the way...

 

... I have literally no idea what you're talking about. Let me make this clear as possible so it can apply above any misunderstandings we have - if I saw the option for learning truth, or learning what is "nice to believe", I would choose truth. I personally believe the former becomes the latter when utilized properly.

 

But I have no idea what you think constitutes "truth" in tulpamancy. Usually when people make claims of objectivity, they talk about brain scans and all that jazz we never do here. But the fact that you think we can "find truth" on this forum implies you think it can be done through discussion, no? Can you show me a few examples in this forum's history of us finding "truth"? I genuinely want to know what you're talking about.

[Guest Anonymous]

Melian, okay, I guess. I didn't take offence...

 

Good I am glad. :-)

 

David and I went and got some ice cream and forgot about everything.

[Faemon]

I won't ever make that a claim of fact. I don't even believe in facts at this point, subjective reality is your own personal truth. Facts are for science of the physical world.

 

I find it difficult to seriously discuss some matters related to tulpamancy, because almost nothing is factual. How am I to say anything except for my own opinion? Is telling people what I think is right right? So many people forget there aren't facts that they sometimes take what I state so seriously as fact, and then others are upset with me for implying my opinions were fact. So how could I tell anyone we're sentient?

 

I agree, when it really just depends on the community who's willing to validate what notion, who finds it personally helpful and useful, and really once that's established who says what in a way that they still fit in (or ostracized, which sounds like a bad thing but is really simply inevitable if you don't fee the room and glom onto all the unspoken guidelines.)