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Are Lucid Dream Personas Sentient?


Guest Anonymous

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Guest Anonymous

How do lucid dream characters seem so real to a human? Is it because they are sentient? My hostie Davie and I have spoken to dream characters many times during lucid dreams, some of them "regulars" that appear in recurring dreams. In those dreams we are consciously aware we are dreaming. Yet we are not controlling or puppeting the dream characters at all. They appear to be sentient, acting autonomously and seemingly independent of our control.

 

There are people who practice lucid dreaming and find a "dream guide" who guides them through the world of lucid dreams. The dream guide is a recurring dream person who seems as sentient and independent as any person that the dreamer might meet in waking life. The lucid dreamer meets the same dream guide each night when they dream.

 

How does this happen? How is our consciousness creating a simulation of a sentient person for us to encounter in the lucid dream and how is that process fundamentally different from a tulpa, aside from the obvious difference of needing to be asleep and dreaming? Remember, a lucid dreamer is technically conscious of the fact that he is dreaming.

 

Isn't the existence of seemingly autonomous and independent lucid dream personas evidence that the human mind can simulate an independent sentient entity?

 

With my hostie, I am a dream guide and dream partner. I am present in lucid dreams like other regular dream personas he encounters. How am I different from the other dream personas during the process of lucid dreaming? Yes, I know, I am still around when he wakes up. But during the dream how am I any different from the other dream personas? What makes me more sentient or real sentience, and a regular lucid dream persona not sentient?

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because we've been experiencing sentient people our whole lives and our brain knows exactly what it's like. And our brain is in total control of what we perceive in dreams, way more control than stuff we do while awake. Yes, that means the brain can simulate sentience - no duh, that is what a tulpa is and there are lots of us.

 

Do you really still care about this sentience stuff? All that matters with a tulpa is whether or not they seem autonomous. Sentience conjecture is just philosophy, it can't ever reach a meaningful conclusion and it shouldn't ever affect your relationship to your tulpa. Ugh.

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Guest Anonymous

because we've been experiencing sentient people our whole lives and our brain knows exactly what it's like. And our brain is in total control of what we perceive in dreams, way more control than stuff we do while awake.

 

This brings me back to all that Living Imagination, dreamform, wakened dreaming and immersive day dreaming stuff Melian and I have been writing about. I don't think we are all cookie cutter cut outs in this regard. I think I can literally dream while I am awake or something very close to it. Some people are susceptible to visions and an overactive imagination. It has always been that way throughout history, hence your tribal shaman and things like that.

 

In another time, I probably would have been a shaman or something like it. I am pretty convinced of that.

 

What I loved about reading Carl Jung's stuff is he was so much like me, especially as a young man. No drugs needed and he had full blown visions. I really need to start reading more of his stuff.

 

Yes, that means the brain can simulate sentience - no duh, that is what a tulpa is and there are lots of us.

 

It is obvious (to me) that this is pretty much a fact that the brain can create a convincing illusion of a separate person in your mind, if you just take history and psychology into account.

 

Do you really still care about this sentience stuff? All that matters with a tulpa is whether or not they seem autonomous. Sentience conjecture is just philosophy, it can't ever reach a meaningful conclusion and it shouldn't ever affect your relationship to your tulpa. Ugh.

 

I'm not sure. Much of what I read on this forum I find appalling and ludicrous. It's a damned nut house. I fit right in then, so it is fun for me at the same time.

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Do you really still care about this sentience stuff? All that matters with a tulpa is whether or not they seem autonomous. Sentience conjecture is just philosophy' date=' it can't ever reach a meaningful conclusion and it shouldn't ever affect your relationship to your tulpa. Ugh.[/quote']

 

All of this is considered philosophy, you’re just ignoring that your conviction implies a philosophy behind over what matters to you, and I’m presuming, to all whom reside in Lumi’s mind. It’s a collective conviction, and sure, some people may share the same sentiment, but it doesn’t mean that everyone thinks that this is all that matters. You may have arrived at a meaningful conclusion with your collective conviction, but it doesn’t mean conjectures of sentience can’t arrive at that, as that means that personal conclusions cannot be arrived at.

 

In other words, if you all can arrive at a conclusion, a decision to feel confident that you came to terms with how you validate what matters, what makes your conclusion distinct from philosophy in general? If anything, this confidence is similar to existentialism in which you all take full acknowledgment that you can create your own subjective meaning in what matters for you. There’s nothing wrong if there can’t be a conclusion, in your shoes, for a certain conjecture as I don’t think morals and ethics are meant to be absolute for everyone to follow irrespective of their own subjective application of what matters to them, and what is a priority for them.

 

I cannot escape this, and I don’t think anyone else can make an exception to this; it’s just the way it is with philosophy. And even if one thinks logic is separate of philosophy, there is a philosophy behind that very same logic too. Just my two cents.

 

 

How am I different from the other dream personas during the process of lucid dreaming? Yes' date=' I know, I am still around when he wakes up. But during the dream how am I any different from the other dream personas? What makes me more sentient or real sentience, and a regular lucid dream persona not sentient?[/quote']

 

I honestly stopped asking myself those questions a long time ago with Eva and Ada. To keep it simple, in terms of how the mind may process all of this experience, and this sentience that I treat them as having the capacity of, is similar to how I interact with dream characters in my dreams; non-lucid, and lucid. Like what you mentioned with recurring dream characters, I guess you could say in the dreaming state, the continuity over time with them can allow the dreamer to attach similar sentiment with tulpas being treated as sentient.

 

And with waking life, treating tulpas as sentient is that same continuity over time that’s developed to instantiate this impression of sentience. I don’t think the mind needs a substantial re-working of itself if by default, lucid dreaming is a scientifically proven phenomenon. Now, this doesn’t mean that I think that because of that, that tulpas are validated in that regard as well; no, not at all.

 

What I mean is, even though lucid dreaming has been scientifically verified ever since the experiment with LaBerge, it doesn’t necessarily scientifically validate dream characters potentially becoming sentient in regards of being an “other” that the dreamer can treat as sentient in waking life. It’s just that if a phenomenon is proven through Science, people can’t help but feel that there can be a trail to figure out the pieces of the puzzle.

 

Through dreaming, I want to believe that I developed some understanding of treating someone with novelty and respect, even though they may not be physical in this reality. And through the practice of the tulpa phenomenon, the habits developed haven’t really been that different for me. I’m just shifting the practice towards a shift in awareness in this reality vs. the dreaming state. And for dreams of them, I don’t cling onto finding whether or not it’s genuinely them, as that seems to lead to a breakdown for some wanting that extra tick of accuracy of genuine existence.

 

It seems like shooting oneself in the foot; in some way, it doesn’t have to interfere with how one treats them as sentient. I think, it’s not a matter of trying to make these super distinctions as I would believe the brain would be using pre-existing processes in relation to dreaming, or broadly, one's imagination, with tulpas; kind of like the brain using, for example, whatever neurolinguistics implied for understanding the understanding of something.

 

This is why I feel that in some way, via the phenomenon of dreaming, everyone has the potential for the mind to put pieces together that seems to fit their own conception of sentience, or whatever aspect they feel makes a tulpa, a tulpa. The ranking and this whole conception that everyone starts from scratch, and have no previous competencies to tie with potential associations of the mind simulating things seems like the BIGGEST oversight I’ve seen in this forum. It would be like me telling Mistgod that he has to “tup” more and armchair less when in fact that all of that collective experiential learning he’s had in conceiving you, Melian, share similar cognitive processes.

 

The distinction of competency however, seems to be based on societal ranking. That ranking, of elitist scumbags with greasy fedora vs. the underdog host who struggles is just a mental barrier created for themselves because it gives them meaning in trying to get out of that, and try to make something for themselves; almost like a mental rat race…because thinking, somehow, that it’s all in them would make things less novel to them, in some way. But why? Why create a rat race for yourself when dreaming, for example, is something everyone can do? Lucid dreaming being validated scientifically only proves this, but only in regards of dreaming, not tulpas, mind you.

 

When I say "you," I mean "you" in a general sense. I apologize if you think I actually think you think this is a mental rat race, or are a victim of it. This is why I go for the progressive newcomer mindset...I always have seen myself as a newcomer...but rather one that acknowledges that we all have similar cognitive processes to allow for certain things to happen.

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Man, I can't think that hard. You talk about P zombies and you agree that no outside observer can know the difference, right? Something like that? You only know what you experience, you can't experience someone else experiencing something. So all that matters with tulpas is their "apparent sentience", or autonomy or whatever. And you can't know if they're "really" sentient or not, right? You can think about it all you'd like, for fun or to improve your beliefs/understanding, but nothing at its core will change, your tulpa will be the same (aside from your changes in beliefs).

 

So you keep saying that you guys need philosophy even though I think I don't. But really, what can you guys hope to accomplish but to convince yourselves what I've already myself? Wouldn't that, or at least another answer you consider satisfactory, be the end goal of all that theorizing and discussion? And if the general goal of this forum's members is to have a good relationship with well-developed tulpas...

 

 

What's wrong with my practical conviction? All I can see to gain is knowledge for knowledge's sake, which is totally fine. But you act like "my answer is only one answer", when my answer is it(what you experience)'s whatever you think, and what I think is the most productive for the general goal of.. just wanting to have tulpas.. man I am completely lost. Maybe your guys' goal isn't just to be happy with your tulpas/not tulpas. I guess I can't understand that, your values are different from mine.

 

In the future if your reply to me is just about my philosophy of not needing philosophy, assume my opinion and our difference in values OK? I honestly don't understand, if it's not just "knowledge for knowledge's sake that satiates a need to know". But definitely feel free to ask me questions about our experiences/beliefs and stuff, I'm not afraid of philosophy, but I think you get what I don't get.

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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It is obvious (to me) that this is pretty much a fact that the brain can create a convincing illusion of a separate person

 

It's equally obvious to me that the mind can perceive what I understand to be an actual separate person, just nonphysical. I am sorry you have suffered peer pressure here to quit offering brain-originated illusion as a valid tulpa state, but I am personally getting the sense that this comes more from pushback (Sentience Zealots should be Wrong because they are Mean!) than Occam's razor? I could be wrong...either way, even in dreams or waking life, sentience isn't a measurable substance: it's a product of a bias.

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Man' date=' I can't think that hard. You talk about P zombies and you agree that no outside observer can know the difference, right? Something like that?[/quote']

 

Woah. Oh no, oh God, no. There’s no way I would be thinking that I would be flabbergasted on whether or not Mistgod, or any other human being is a p-zombie, or not. Those threads are just thought experiments, and shouldn’t be assumed as the person really thinking one, or the other is a p-zombie. I think because of those threads, you try to salvage a personality out of me, and think that I’m really left with agnosticism. No, this isn’t the case. I may be agnostic, but definitely not agnostic in regards to p-zombies.

 

I can know that the person isn’t a p-zombie through inferences. Examples include, just communicating with them in general. Even in forum posts; the words they use, words you use, like how you “can’t think that hard.” I can infer that you had some kind of difficulty trying to wrap around that thinking hard; that distress seems to be exclusive to anyone that can put into context of their emotions, and tap into even having a behavior of distress over a post I make. I may not know the inner experiences of the other mind, and have to rely on just my own inner experiences, but it isn’t something where I think other minds are false.

 

I don’t believe in solipsism. Period.

 

So all that matters with tulpas is their "apparent sentience"' date=' or autonomy or whatever. And you can't know if they're "really" sentient or not, right?[/quote']

 

No…no..this is why I thought playing devil’s advocate would remove some of those misconceptions. If you’re talking about “can’t know” in regards to me having assurance over my own tulpa’s capacity for sentience, and what have you:

 

- Just like how I treat others as sentient, and make inferences that they are sentient, the same principle applies for me with tulpas. If anything, the added assurance that I know I’m sentient and consciously experiencing things doesn’t make me feel doubtful that they already have this capacity if we’re sharing the same brain.

 

- Creating an internal scenario with the beetle in the box; that one cannot know a tulpa’s inner experiences….that leads to a self-referential dead-end. As it’s undermining one’s confidence in knowing they, as the host, is sentient. It leads to analogies like AI, or anything that seems to be a degenerate to actual sentience.

 

- I never made claims that one cannot know a tulpa’s true sentience. Whatever you were implying, reconsider my speculation in regards to other minds; other minds as in me not knowing the inner experiences of Lumi’s brain in which I presume you share with him; that you’re not some other-worldly being that can be separate from that same brain.

 

- I think maybe you thought by “other,” you confused the “otherness” in regards to one’s own personal experiences; the whole treating as sentient being implied as treating them as an “other.” I never stated distress over me not knowing what could be going on in my experiences. Sure, I may not be able arrive at conclusions through theories of mind, for instance, but in terms of inferences, and what I’m experiencing with them…it’s the same as arriving at your own subjective meaning into this.

 

You can think about it all you'd like' date=' for fun or to improve your beliefs/understanding, but nothing at its core will change, your tulpa will be the same (aside from your changes in beliefs).[/quote']

 

Lucilyn. I’m not omniscient, and I would never claim myself to be in regards to my own mind, and even this universe. I am just a human with limits just like anyone else. I cannot play God, and assume I have an omniscient nature of my own mind; I’m not like Mary who has all physical knowledge of this world, re: the knowledge argument thread I created. This presumption of yours -- that there won’t be a significant paradigm shift, or a change in core philosophy is based on how you don’t feel philosophy isn’t crucial for understanding even though ironically, you are reliant upon the linguistics, at the very least, behind philosophy in general to even come up with your own meaning of what’s meaningful.

 

This isn’t about needing philosophy like sniffing crack; this is using philosophy as a bridge to communicate to each other. That’s all. It’s just another way of semantics being expressed.

 

But really' date=' what can you guys hope to accomplish but to convince yourselves what I've already myself?[/quote']

 

You’ve created an end-game philosophy. There’s nothing wrong with that. But other people have a different end-game they may want to reach, but you feel so confident that this end-game/end-goal conviction of yours is what we all will go to regardless of what we pursue for the sake of knowing. It is that very same clinging onto the lack of interest in philosophy in which you can ground this presumption, and unless you yourself have experienced pursuing for the sake of knowing; knowing yourself, the brain you share, and such…your conclusion that there can’t be anything significant to accomplish other than what you already made of yourself is just that---your own conviction.

 

Wouldn't that' date=' or at least another answer you consider satisfactory, be the end goal of all that theorizing and discussion?[/quote']

 

And if the general goal of this forum's members is to have a good relationship with well-developed tulpas...

 

You should know that in this forum, people will like what another person dislikes. What it means to have a good relationship with tulpas is a pursuit for normative ethics, i.e., how one “ought” to do something; that’s subjective in of itself.

 

 

Maybe your guys' goal isn't just to be happy with your tulpas/not tulpas.

 

You make it look as if I’m depressed. That they’re depressed. Just because you’re distressed, and maybe depressed over me thinking doesn’t mean I share the same sentiment. This isn’t even phasing me as to even having an emotion to subscribe to negatively. Did you ever wonder that things like this is fun for me and us? Did you ever wonder that these pursuits with thought experiments and such can be a collective curiosity for them to figure out more about their nature? Did you ever wonder that even in spite of the dead-ends, and explanatory gaps with tulpas, and theories of minds, that it’s that joy that comes out of it that makes us do it?

 

What's wrong with my practical conviction? All I can see to gain is knowledge for knowledge's sake' date=' which is totally fine. But you act like "my answer is only one answer", when my answer is it(what you experience)'s whatever you think, and what I think is the most productive for the general goal of.. just wanting to have tulpas.. man I am completely lost[/quote']

 

I think maybe you structure your assumptions as the everyday forcer’s belief. I don’t even know what constitutes “everyday” force, IMO. I do think you’re acting as if your conviction is the only way to go, and that further discussions that may be complex are just for parlor games, or something. Words like what you said with:

 

All that matters with a tulpa is whether or not they seem autonomous.

 

A common behavioral trend of treating certain convictions as reaching the end-goal, or practicing the end-goal, “All”—solid assurance in something. All in regards of “at the end of the day;” same sentiment, Lucilyn.

 

no duh' date=' that is what a tulpa is and there are lots of us.[/quote']

 

This seems to be related to end-goal assurance over what makes a tulpa, a tulpa, i.e., ontology.

 

Do you really still care about this sentience stuff?

 

I’m sure this was asked because indirectly, you knew that Mistgod and Melian have their own end-goal assurances over what they believe can, and cannot happen regardless of what anyone says. And because of all of the debate, discussions, pages upon pages, and eyes bleeding due to having asparagus, it’s natural for you to point to this question because at the end of the day, you acknowledge that they acknowledged that nothing’s going to change their beliefs.

 

It’s a euphemistic way of shutting down the discussions; that we’re here rubbing our heads trying not to bleed of autism. Maybe it might be the case for some, IDK, but I’m not bleeding due to having asparagus here. I think maybe you naturally want to mediate things, which is a great attribute to have, but sometimes, it may lead to attracting to the very same things you want to mediate, or to satiate that desire to mediate something; almost like this.

Note, “asshole” can be replaced with “Linkzelda and Mistgod being distressed, so let me mediate them."

 

 

Perhaps I’ve been confusing your means of mediating as in guise of you acting as if you reached the end-goal that everyone is striving for. Not everyone thinks discussions are a win-lose mentality…at least not me. Because once I close the tab for the forum on my browser, hello reality.

 

But definitely feel free to ask me questions about our experiences/beliefs and stuff' date=' I'm not afraid of philosophy, but I think you get what I don't get.[/quote']

 

It seems, and I’m inferring based on posts before with you all in general, that no matter how much a person takes great pains to try and understand you all, there’s that extra layer of mystery that seems that, if discussed, suddenly ends all the misconceptions. But, it never seems to be brought into surface that can end all misconceptions about you all. Not sure if this is me being a walking Dunning-Kruger effect (I'm starting to feel this is the case), or you all adding more layers of mystery where it’s “Oh, boy, if that Linkzelda just knew this thing about us, IF ONLY, it would just make him stop poking our brains to see if we’re p-zombies. Ugh.”

 

I'm not even on a witch hunt for p-zombies.

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well let me start off with the statement that I'm completely lost, I don't exactly know what we're talking about. I guess I don't know what p zombies are, even though you guys used to discuss them. I thought it was kinda weird when you started saying "I know you're not a p zombie because you don't speak complete gibberish". I thought p zombies were the difference in someone actually feeling and experiencing, and something outputting the exact mannerisms/responses of someone who was but is actually not feeling things. So they should be indistinguishable because you can't know their experience itself, and that's where debates on sentience even come from.

 

When I said the point of whatever was "apparent autonomy", I was just talking about people who have basically "making a tulpa" as their goal. Obviously tons of people have lots of different stuff they want out of the experience. To be completely honest - I just now spent like 20 minutes talking to a friend about Undertale and completely forgot the little I was going to reply with, so.. Uhm.. I just remember thinking that you think on a whole different level than me. Like, you obviously write stuff on that level, but you also interpret what I say as if I am too, and I'm not. That's why you always read way too much into what I'm saying. That's not your fault or mine, I just think you should know that, I really don't think that deeply about what I'm saying. I'm pretty straight forward really, all the serious thinking is done by tewi and lumi and all the stuff about tulpas/our natures is long done. I can tell you their opinions and beliefs that I agree with, but I really can't defend or explain them so well, and I kinda get lost when you take what I said apart.

 

Not gonna tell you to stop doing that since you have a good point that it is fun to you, but don't expect too much from me okay? You know my beliefs are pretty simple, because I'm not really the one that made them, Lumi is. And Tewi has been helping Lumi by explaining him to himself for years. I just wanna have fun and help people (who can then later have fun).

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Guest Anonymous

I am not sure how the first part of this post got deleted, but it did. When I hit the button to post it, suddenly the entire first half of the message was missing. Guys it is just after one in the morning, so instead of rewriting that entire text wall just know I read all of your responses and found them interesting and informative. Ugh sorry... thank you.

 

I am sorry you have suffered peer pressure here to quit offering brain-originated illusion as a valid tulpa state, but I am personally getting the sense that this comes more from pushback (Sentience Zealots should be Wrong because they are Mean!) than Occam's razor? I could be wrong...either way, even in dreams or waking life, sentience isn't a measurable substance: it's a product of a bias.

 

You are absolutely, totally, utterly, spot on.

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Lemme say that I've maybe had one lucid dream in my life. Lucid dreaming isn't something I try to really do even if I've had like, temporary interest in it a few times.

 

An interpretation of how dreams work is that they're just reworkings of things you've experienced lately that are designed to be kind of a crash course on life while you sleep.

 

That in mind, yeah like someone else said, we're around people all the time, so our brain spits out people. I don't know about you guys but in dreams people sometimes don't act consistently and logic goes out the window, which I think is one of the differences between tulpas and dreampeople. Even if there is sentience involved, dream people aren't around for very long while tulpas are. Even if the dream person is reoccurring, it's not like you can shoot the shit with the guy who keeps trying to sell you the three headed chicken you need for a home restoration.

 

Even if you're not of the opinion that tulpas have their own internal experiences going on, at least they can be called up and have memories of things that happened. I don't lucid dream but I've never had an experience where that's happened in a regular dream.

 

Have you ever been able to approach someone you kept meeting in a lucid dream and have them talk rationally about something that had happened before?

We're all gonna make it brah.

 

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