Wittgenstein's Beetle in a Box – How Tulpa is Your Tulpa?

[Guest Anonymous]

Have to agree with Mistgod's "hardware" analogy.

I always think about Tulpamancy in terms of computer language.

 

Here is where I part ways from most everyone else here though. If you think of me as an operating system and the brain as the hardware (a very rough analogy at best) Melian would be a subroutine dependent on the rest of the elements of the operating system software. She would not be a separate operating system on her own, nor becoming an operating system on her own. I do not believe that my tulpa is evolving into an equal mind to my own that works in parallel to me. I do not believe Melian is real. I am real, she is not. I am the primary mind, Melian is an imaginary creation that works inside of my mind and is dependent on it to exist.

 

Others keep wanting to tell me how wrong I am about this. I really don't think I am wrong about Melian being imaginary. Who would know better than me anyway? I am uncertain about the tulpas of other people. I cannot perceive them directly. I can only take people at their word. Parallel minds separate, but equal, existing within the same brain are very plausible and there is science to back it up. I cannot deny the plausibility nor the preponderance of anecdotal evidence in the form of written testimony of members of this community who have created tulpas already. It is possible that everyone is delusional about it, but that is a lot of deluded people and some pretty major and elaborately complex delusions.

 

Melian and I came up with this possibility months ago. Melian may be imaginary while at least some tulpas may be real independent parallel and equal minds. There is no reason to assume that if Melian is imaginary, so are all tulpas. Melian could be a related phenomenon but there may be a lot of related but similar situations that can happen within a human brain.

 

Melian and I still have not formed a final conclusion on the nature of tulpa sentience and realness. That may not ever happen until we create a tulpa of our own and see if it feels different than the system we already have.

[Solune]

Melian and I still have not formed a final conclusion on the nature of tulpa sentience and realness.

 

You may find it interesting that I don't believe anyone is "real".

I subscribe to the theory that all souls/minds (whatever you want to call them) share a common Source, and that the idea of the self exists only to facilitate the having of unique experiences.

 

When we die, the illusion of the self fades and our experiences return to the Source to be processed. We cease, which is sad... but what we do in life lives on as data, which I find comforting.

 

Then again, I am crazy.

---

(a very rough analogy at best)

 

Oh, for sure. It works for me but I know many Tuppermancers don't like it.

It's all semantics anyway... life is 99% semantics if you ask me.

[Guest Anonymous]

 

You may find it interesting that I don't believe anyone is "real".

I subscribe to the theory that all souls/minds (whatever you want to call them) share a common Source, and that the idea of the self exists only to facilitate the having of unique experiences.

 

When we die, the illusion of the self fades and our experiences return to the Source to be processed. We cease, which is sad... but what we do in life lives on as data, which I find comforting.

 

Then again, I am crazy.

---

 

Oh, for sure. It works for me but I know many Tuppermancers don't like it.

It's all semantics anyway... life is 99% semantics if you ask me.

 

There is a lot of appeal to that way of looking at things. It certainly is possible and aligns with some religions and philosophies of the world.

[Linkzelda]

The three of us are all just programs sharing the same hardware/firmware.

Luna and Sol are both capable of programming servitors, and I suspect they could create their own Tulpas if they wanted to (though we've all agreed to table that idea until we're more experienced).

 

Granted, I am clearly a more complicated program than are my Tulpas... but who's to say that, given enough time, they won't catch up to (or surpass) me?

 

I can understand the sentiment with coming to terms with the computer and AI analogy, but something to keep in mind that in spite of whatever functions you may correlate with non-computational reasoning (e.g. being a conscious experiencer), if you call one form of intelligence artificial, or analogous to computational reasoning, then all forms would be artificial and/or computational. It’s almost like an adjective, to some extent, as if something is artificial in exhibiting sentience, they are no more or less “artificially” sentient than something else.

 

When one subscribes that all are similar to computational reasoning, they may be overlooking the fact that the instantiation of sentience doesn’t seem fathomable if instantiation of sentience in actual, sentient beings is a hard problem of consciousness itself that has yet to be solved. Things like self-referential reasoning (e.g. bring back past evaluations of experiential context), having an inner experience, having conscious experience and acknowledgment of this (e.g. metacognition) being equivalent to the real thing presumes a bridge has been made for the dilemma of objectifying inner experiences that are private.

 

] Aren't we all Tulpas when you get right down to it?

Look at people who are vegetables and have zero high-brain function.

Clearly the body doesn't "need" us to survive, which sort of implies that mind and body are separate entities.

Obviously vegetables would die without advanced medical technology/outside intervention, but you get my point.

 

You’re undermining how a vegetable would die either way without those supplements in salvaging whatever cognition needed to still live. If our body doesn’t need a self, a conscious experiencer, if this truly is the case, then I find it quite difficult as to why the brain needs to have a self to sustain a body if it doesn’t really need “us.”

 

] It's like a mech suit without a pilot, rusting away in a corner.

The suit is designed to be piloted and has no purpose otherwise.

We are the pilot and Tulpas are our copilots.

 

This is just another analogy for a homunculus, i.e., a creature that can take the backstage, watch everything that’s going on in the mind, and having the reigning of control of it as well. Sure, there may be a shift in personality with lobotomies, a metal rod going through one’s head, and such, but it doesn’t necessarily strip one away from being classified as human. Maybe in the worst case scenario, they may be “sub-human,” but ironically, AI would be in a similar category if we’re applying this in context of computational reasoning.

 

The whole RAM, processing speed, etc. is contingent upon “artificial,” and again, it’s really an adjective that can’t really make one more or less artificial than the other. To introduce the probability of a tulpa coming to equal terms, or even better than the conscious experiencer who’s existed for the longest means the analogy falls short, and that’s how the cookie crumbles for it.

 

Melian and I still have not formed a final conclusion on the nature of tulpa sentience and realness. That may not ever happen until we create a tulpa of our own and see if it feels different than the system we already have.

 

See, here’s the thing. This thread isn’t about attacking the authenticity of there being any remnant of sentience, realness, and what have you. This would be a misunderstanding of the analogy with the beetle in the box; i.e., if one can make an objective statement about internal, private experiences, then the “private” language that’s supposed to be exclusive to one being made “public” to others loses its novelty of being “private.” To put this in another context:

 

- By having feedback from others, who is able to reconcile, and come to an understanding over what’s going on with their inner experiences while also facing the catch-22 of not being able to give a play-by-play over what’s really going on. No qualia radars for them to use; just inferences from societal context of rules with languages that they can come to terms with. It compensates the seemingly unreliable recall we have of ourselves, and when the social factor with language cannot be understood, how another can “infer” about another person’s inner experiences (infer being presuming vs. validating empirically) gets lost in a sea of random noise; one ends up not feeling validated that a tulpa is more or less tulpa-ey than the other.

 

- So even if you are open to treat Melian, or another tulpa as sentient, you face the strife of having this resonate with your current system that seems to be contingent on the host being the sole, exclusive person to be the conscious experiencer, and to have the competencies to have cognitive faculties at their beck and call. All sentiment in treating them as sentient can easily go out the window, and to chalk up how easy it would be for them -- Think about Batman and his morals. He could just do away with the Joker, but one never knows when the Joker may just get a lobotomy, and not have any reconciliation to cause the destruction he initiates. Stripping away that opportunity would be rejecting a way of life for another, and wouldn't make Batman any better than the Joker.

 

- A core concept to keep in mind with the private language is this (just in case the other context didn’t make sense: If one person that speaks, or fathoms a rule of language (e.g. how they feel their tulpa is tulpa-ey than the other) is the only one that can know these rules, then the benchmark of correctness, realness, etc. is literally based on what that one person feels during the time those utterances, emotional inferences, and such are made. So, this allows the person to just do whatever they want, and they won’t necessarily be wrong about it. They can plug their ears, and go lalalalalala. But this doesn’t seem to be useful as even though it throws the probability of making a mistake out of the window (since it would be futile to make objective statements of inner experiences), it throws away the probability of following a rule (e.g. the social context of rules with language); this can be done on purpose, or accidentally. The "private" language is not governed by anything, and thus cannot be something for others to investigate. The futility is real, but that doesn’t stop others from making inferences.

 

- If we see someone that’s the walking example of computational reasoning, if they’re making random noises akin to a p-zombie, we don’t really claim they’re speaking in encrypted languages, do we? How can we even imagine this? We would probably see them akin to a vegetable, having went through a lobotomy, or something like that because these are inferences that makes us think, “Oh, this person doesn’t seem to be alright.”

[Linkzelda]

More Theorizations and Thoughts - Note: This is only one person's impression over the beetle in the box, and what it implies.

 

Language is shareable, but inner experiences are not shareable

 

Language is shareable, so a private language would imply that it would be impossible for others to learn how to use the words of one’s private language. Private language would basically lack anything that can be based externally. It involves going around in circles, and not being able to put your finger on it, or it being right under the tip of your tongue, but you can’t attribute anything to it. However, there can be a time where the language we share comes to the realization at a context of something we can “point” to. And when this happens, that private language isn’t really private anymore. Because if there’s nothing we can’t do in terms of language (e.g. English), then there’s nothing remaining that a private language can do; it’s just there in the random noise that has unreliable feedback.

 

 

One could question if a tulpa can share the inner experiences of a host, but that might be more along the lines of whether or not they can share the same mind; that conclusion can be something we can make an assumption from if it's not grounded from the assumption that tulpas would be other-worldly beings

 

 

Private Objects

 

Examples of Private Objects:

 

- Our feelings – we can consider our feelings to be private, but we can arrive at a context that a person could be depressed, or in pain, but we cannot “have” their pain. Edit: It's somewhat ironic behind what possession and switching would imply; them having control (partially/whole) over things we have experiences of.

 

A host’s tulpa – Why is it that it’s the “host’s” tulpa vs. them being a tulpa? Because there’s an indirect implication that we can make that they are part of their mind, and potentially part of their phenomenal experiences (definition #2):

perceptible by the senses or through immediate experience.

"the phenomenal world"

-

. So even though we cannot have their experiences of having a tulpa in their own context along with being influenced by social context of what a tulpa could be, we can talk about these things, and share it with others nonetheless.

 

Where The Futility Comes In

 

The futility comes in when we go too far, and even when we restrict things too much, because it becomes difficult for there to be a distinction either way. In other words, instead of trying to literally attempt to “have” another person’s experiences, or a presumed tulpa’s experiences, learning to be content with language to infer from, find reactions, and react appropriately to them may allow us to not be as demystified as to what sentience would entail. Because surprise, surprise, certain ways languages are put into discourse (e.g. philosophy) can allow us to make that “shareable” that much greater; but not “shareable” in the “having one's inner experiences” shareable to "others".

 

A quick analogy for this, and I’ll be grabbing some quotes from a thread here:

Soruce: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas?pid=166879#pid166879

We simply have a shortcut on our desktop to an image of 1,000 digits of pi organized 10 at a time in rows of 100. Not like I did it all at once, I really couldn't. I just bring up the picture every once in a while and see how far I can get before it gets blurry, and then I go over what I wasn't sure of. Over a couple months I got to about 60 places. Then I stopped for a while because I forgot.. then recently learned another 10.

 

Why? Because aforementioned idol Brian Wecht randomly decided, to annoy the others, to spout off 100 digits of pi during a stream. And I have to admit, it's pretty satisfying to just spout a bunch of random numbers you call pi and see if people believe you - and if they check, their reactions. Actually they react like you guys. "Why did you sit there and memorize all that??" I spend no more than a few minutes a day every once in a while honestly.

 

Oh, and the goal of 770 digits is so I can recite pi and end with "Seven, two, one, one, three, four, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, and so on!"

 

 

(I do plan to memorize others such as the square root of 2 and the golden ratio to ~20 places in the future, I've just been lazy.)

 

To do a quick case study on this:

 

- It can be implied that Tewi would have a mode of action, and even utterances in reciting the digits of “pi.” It can be inferred that they have an objective in this case, and they can presumably put things into context (e.g. reciting those digits). It can also be inferred that they can be capable of coming to the acknowledgment of even thinking of how others would “react"; to see the look on their faces when the recitation actually matches the digits of pi.

 

- Although we cannot “have” that feeling of excitement, or emotive disposition of how they react to others reacting to this sense of bewilderment over the recitation of pi, we can infer that any sentient being (implied as akin of humans), just through inference alone, can have the capacity to even look forward to reactions to react appropriately to. It's the mind's privacy into action that we cannot alter; they exclusively enjoy that privacy.

 

 

Sonder

 

- And this can relate to sonder:

The profound feeling of realizing that everyone' date=' including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.[/quote']

 

- So even though we may lack awareness of Tewi having their own inner experiences (whether we genuinely believe it, take it at face value, or have the benefit of a doubt), we can acknowledge that they, Tewi, would have a profound feeling of realizing these reactions of others; complete strangers on a Twitch stream that they themselves cannot “have” the experiences of. But having this awareness that others have a narrative and inner experience of their own, and that it can be constantly lived regardless of whatever a person thinks of Tewi, is an assurance they will come to. The feeling is shareable in the sense that we have something to “point” to—a context--, but not shareable as in “having Tewi’s profound feeling". We may come to inferences as to why Tewi may strive to be enlightened, and empathize why they want to self-actualize in as many ways they can, but we cannot “have” Tewi’s yearning for self-actualization because that is exclusive to them, the host, and the tulpas whom they share a mind with.

 

- The duality here is that the inner experiences can be inclusive amongst the host, and those that reside in their mind, but would be exclusive for that mind and the inhabitants because we cannot “have” that mind. Sure, everyone can have a brain that has similar cognitive processes in putting things into context, e.g., neurolinguistics. But unless there can be a way to structure that brain atom for atom, neuron for neuron, or even an exact representation of their qualia, and have this shareable to others, one has to come to terms that in spite of this futility of “having” a person’s inner experience, we can appreciate the contexts we use to arrive at our means of inner experiences. Although we cannot use Science to measure it (yet, who knows), or even have empirical observations of this, it can be expressed through public language that can be accessed.

 

- People would spend less time comparing themselves to others, and to simply be in awe of how our minds can find ways to react to things, and how we can come to react appropriately (but not absolutely, mind you). A true, peaceful solitude, I guess. Because any attempts to have those inner experiences bleed out to others is simply for acknowledgment, and for others to “point” to certain languages to arrive at an understanding, but not an understanding that becomes objective in seeing that person’s inner experience synapse for synapse, or qualia for qualia. When you trying to make unspoken objectivity spoken, and want others to "have it," that is the limit of playing a God's eye point of view.

[Tewi]

I used one of your posts here in a thread post here that is theorizing about inner experiences, and such:

https://community.tulpa.info/thread-wittgenstein-s-beetle-in-a-box-%E2%80%93-how-tulpa-is-your-tulpa?pid=168414#pid168414

 

Can I ask you if this was okay with me quoting something from you, Tewi?

 

It's fine of course. Anything you can click the "Reply" button on is liable to be quoted as it was posted publicly in the first place.

 

I find it interesting how you keep making a point of us being able to experience experiences, ie. not be complete p-zombies. It really doesn't seem that strange to me. The types of things you consider proof of sentience are common to even the most basic, slightly-developed tulpas. If you can say something to a tulpa and get a sensical reply, to you that implies they were able to process what you said and develop their own unique response to it. Maybe it's just for the sake of philosophizing, because that doesn't seem to mean much to me. When it comes to questioning sentience here on tulpa.info, most often the fear is not a tulpa being unable to think but the host unknowingly doing the thinking for their tulpa. That would mean the "sentience" you've proven is only your own, right?

 

But unless there can be a way to structure that brain atom for atom, neuron for neuron, or even an exact representation of their qualia, and have this shareable to others, one has to come to terms that in spite of this futility of “having” a person’s inner experience, we can appreciate the contexts we use to arrive at our means of inner experiences. Although we cannot use Science to measure it (yet, who knows), or even have empirical observations of this, it can be expressed through public language that can be accessed.

 

Something about the concept of recreating experiences one-to-one in others' minds feels unnatural to me. It's not human, where humanity is all about individuality and separation from the whole, interacting. As soon as an experience can be recreated for another, including all of the contexts and ways of thinking that led to it being experienced just so, sharing that experience becomes pointless. You might as well merge the two minds entirely to become one, there's no sense in leaving an incomplete tidbit of shared qualia, or at least that's how it feels to me. Following that idea of all or many humans becoming one, we run into a problem - that I'd poetically describe as the end of humanity. If we're all experiencing things the same way, no longer separated by our differences defining individuality, we've lost all potential of having our view of reality changed (for better or worse). Without differing, sometimes clashing worldviews, there's nothing left to challenge the one particular view gained through a single entity's experience. Nature has shown that this differing, mixing of imperfections in dealing with reality and otherwise smoothing-out the "best way to be" is essential to evolution. As amazing as the concept of sharing qualia seems, I feel at its heart this act would compromise humanity itself.

 

Or you could just limit it to a reasonable level and enjoy the benefits of perfect communication, I guess. Lumi has had recurring dreams over the years of a technology that allows the sharing of qualia, as casually as we watch Youtube videos now. Recording and later sharing experiences ranging from sports and deep thought (perhaps philosophizing?) to sex or even pain or suffering, having all of these experiences as readily available as a video of a cat chasing a laser pointer or the Olympics. Since that is quite literally a "dream" of his, I'm not as inclined to call it the decline of humanity. But that is how it feels to me, unnatural to life itself. I don't know if I could participate in something like that.

[Linkzelda]

When it comes to questioning sentience here on tulpa.info' date=' most often the fear is not a tulpa being unable to think but the host unknowingly doing the thinking for their tulpa. That would mean the "sentience" you've proven is only your own, right?[/quote']

 

That fear seems to be cultivated on the presumption that the host can condition their imagination to where the imagination is conditioning their thinking to coordinate the thinking of a tulpa that they still feel is ultimately their own. Well, if one is sharing a mind, to some extent, it would be implied that they would be sharing whatever cognitive processes there is to the brain. The difference is, there would be an implication that a tulpa can create their own inner experiences via that sharing of the brain, which would imply that there can be multiple conscious experiencers within the same mind.

 

For example, with lucid dreaming, a person can take on the perspective of another person, and even though it’s imaginary at best, and really the brain’s own take on what the perspective could be like, the process for that is still there. Shift this with tulpas for a bit, along with that fear of a host “unknowingly doing the thinking for their tulpa,” brings up the concern on whether or not parroting can happen at an unconscious level. But, as others have stated in a thread here, parroting’s definition emphasizes so much on “conscious,” which means that unknowingly means it’s obviously not conscious. But in order for this parroting to occur at an unconscious level, and still hold true to the actual term that clings onto “conscious,” a metaphor is employed to salvage its usage.

 

In other words, the brain ends up being the one that becomes a conscious experiencer who ends up controlling the tulpa. But, if the brain can be a conscious experiencer in this sense, then what’s the point in creating selves in the first place to be conscious experiencers? That’s why that fear people have is made due to confusion of not understanding what they’re over-exaggerating here with the “unknowingly.” There are theories of mind that would allow splits, multiple selves, systems, tulpas, etc., but because that type of language, and formatting of it not being discussed about as much in the forum, that fear never seems to go away entirely.

 

The types of things you consider proof of sentience are common to even the most basic' date=' slightly-developed tulpas…..Maybe it's just for the sake of philosophizing, because that doesn't seem to mean much to me.[/quote']

 

See, right there, you stated a conviction that this is apparent to even the most basic, slightly-developed tulpas. But I would ask how you are able to ground this conviction? Surely, you couldn’t have grounded it based on inner experiences of other tulpas and hosts because again, beetle in the box; you can’t really know if there’s a beetle in the box to begin with for the “other” mind. Keywords being “other mind” since that sums the implication that there can be other mental inhabitants in that same mind that “other minds” cannot inclusively access. But through that belief that this can happen in the most basic sense for you is what allows you to undermine this very same thing that people would scrape through miles of broken glass just to hear over a walkie talkie, metaphorically speaking. This undermining of basic sentience can also be due to how we tend to use sentience as an umbrella term for continuity of self, identity, and things like that.

 

But even if a tulpa and host share the same neurolinguistics of the mind/brain, what allows us to create more distinctions is how we integrate words like “identity,” “self,” and “other.” And that fear could also be based upon how at the end of the day, the person can still call this their “own.” But, it’s really their “own” in the sense of their own mind. But to get out of that fear is for the person to accept the probability that they aren’t the starring roles in their narrative of the mind all the time; undermining basic processes that would mean the world for others would essentially be akin to treating others like minor characters; this can be a tulpa treating the host as a minor character, or vice versa. But that mode of thought, even if it wasn’t intentional –consciously or unconsciously—is a mode of thought for analysis. For the sake of trying to come to an understanding over why there’s even a novelty held over basic, sentient features.

 

But it’s that confusion that creates the fear, and ends up with the person not holding much novelty behind those basic things. Through these “basic” attributes, one doesn’t have to be demystified if a tulpa can have that implied freedom in thinking even though they share that same mind. The distinctions are through the other types of languages we use to go more in detail. It all leads to inclusiveness that still allow “otherness” to even exist. The same as how dream characters can exist, even though the experiential context of a dream at best is imaginary. But through waking life, even if tulpas would be grounded on that (partially, or wholly), the person is taking more militant steps into believing these basic features with sentience, and such can be shared, i.e., being treated as sentient.

 

A person can still say it’s all them, but they’re really saying it’s all in the same mind. Because a person is so used to calling their mind their own, it makes them undermine the potential of “otherness.” And when this beetle in the box analogy comes in, it should make them question that “otherness” vs. “mine.”

 

 

As amazing as the concept of sharing qualia seems' date=' I feel at its heart this act would compromise humanity itself.[/quote']

 

That was just speculation. I never meant for others to take it seriously, as we have to ground these presumptions through conjecture and speculation alone. It’s kind of an example of private language where if there’s nothing language (e.g. English, Spanish, etc.) can do, there there’s nothing else the private language can seem to do either; it gets left in random noise as another thought experiment done in vain, I guess. It's all about changing the narrative, and the dynamic between that narrative, and the conscious experiencer in question. For a random analogy on narratives and story, here's a profession from a fictional character:

(ends at 1:51).

 

 

---

 

Also, about the p-zombie thing-- Because of the p-zombie concept, it allows people that are skeptical to curb stomp the living hell out of the concept of tulpas. It's a crutch that allows them to create their own dogma that this is all for show, that people are smoking shrooms, or that it's all a lie and delusion in the end. But when they question the nature of p-zombies, they would have to question themselves, and basically any kind of activity they can do as sentient beings, and question why if a tulpa (if they assumed they are p-zombies) can do the same things they're doing...why is that the case? And thus discussions over things like "they share the same mind," "sentience exists at the base level for slightly developed tulpas," etc. comes into play. It, p-zombies, is just another thought experiment like beetle in a box.

[Lucilyn]

We don't believe in the idea of unconscious parroting by the way, Tewi was just saying that's a fear people have not that it's a legitimate one.

 

I would ask how you are able to ground this conviction? Surely, you couldn’t have grounded it based on inner experiences of other tulpas and hosts because again, beetle in the box; you can’t really know if there’s a beetle in the box to begin with for the “other” mind.

 

(People tell us about their experiences talking to their tulpas and we've seen hundreds and hundreds of 'em)

 

We don't know anything "for sure" with the whole personal-experience-only thing so we go off of what people say, and a whole lot of people say their tulpas talk to them. But that doesn't mean their tulpas are sentient, it could be unconscious parroting or whatever.. or whatever. I forget what this discussion was about but I think that was our point. Anyways we consider "unconscious parroting" an oxymoron and think once you reach the point it's "unconscious" you just have a tulpa. If you aren't doing it consciously then your mind is doing it, and that's what a tulpa is I guess. ('Sept when you're switched, seems like that makes the tulpa the conscious one. See that's why we don't really consider ourselves "tulpas", just people. Like we're tulpas but that's not our defining characteristic because I can be more person than tulpa if I want.)

[Linkzelda]

Through the word "tulpa" is someone we want to treat as sentient, and we use certain narratives to assume they can have a determined existence in the future within our inner experiences. But when we do these things so much over time, "tulpa" becomes an understatement because at this point, the tulpa in question would want to be treated as a human, especially if they can do things their host can. The person would, at some point, have to come to terms with the probability that there can be an "otherness" than themselves within their mind. Because to not do so would make "treat as sentient" an ethic done in vain; "tulpa" becomes a language to describe the virtue we take part in hopefully achieving this, I guess. In other words, "you have a tulpa because you worked for them."

 

Some may spend decades believing that at the end of the day, it's "me me me me me and all of me," but to change that dynamic to accept otherness in spite of the origins of that "otherness" is another wall for them to climb. Hence, like that video link I sent for the sake of analogy, realizing this could be the first step in understanding what it means to be a human, or having humanistic qualities (just adding that in there in case people go apeshit over a tulpa that doesn't have a human form).

 

I have no disagreement with this. But like what you stated that you ground these presumptions on anecdotes, and inferences as well, it's the same thing I, or anyone else would have to rely on, i.e., appeal to the populace. I wasn't really trying to ask "show me the evidence," but I have a feeling you didn't really assume that.

[Guest Anonymous]

We don't believe in the idea of unconscious parroting by the way, Tewi was just saying that's a fear people have not that it's a legitimate one.

 

I do believe in "unconscious parroting" or subliminal imagination or being skilled at hiding aspects of your own imagination from conscious awareness. I see no reason to believe it is impossible. Just because the thought of it scares tulpamancers doesn't mean it is impossible.

 

I think a good example of this is people who are afraid of the dark or they just watched a scary horror movie and then they are all alone in the house. Suddenly they start hearing funny sounds, whispers, creeks, taps. They might see things out of the side of their vision, shadows moving. They get a sense someone or something is present, watching them. They are on edge. They say to themselves "that is my imagination running away with me" or "it's just my imagination." Even so, it is hard sometimes to stop hearing the noises and imagining something is watching you.

 

So, there is a subliminal level to imagination isn't there? That is just one example of unconscious or subliminal imagination, I am sure I can come up with many more.

 

Like I have said before, sane people have heard voices and had conversations with spirits and things for thousands of years. I think it may be that these things were imagined.

 

IMAGINATION and the ability to delude oneself is a powerful thing.