the future of humanity, tulpa driven

[solarchariot]

I am going to initiate this conversation in metaphysical and paranormal just because of the ‘transpersonal’ nature and speculative discourse of the invitation to dialogue, though in truth, it really belongs in a category that I don’t think exist in the forum. This conversation, though speculative, is not science fiction. This is in the works, with powers behind it as formative as Elon Musk and Bill Gates, to achieve a brain-computer interface, and brains have already experienced brain to brain linkage in small ways between humans, the first thoughts have been shared remotely, and brain to computers to operate robotic limbs is a reality. But I want to explore even further, something I encountered this morning, something, I dare say puts those human hosts with tulpas at the forefront of something that would make us, tulpamancer, the host and tulpas themselves, very likely the leaders of the future. I would argue we are so strategically placed in terms of collaborative inner lives that we are already changing the nature of what it means to be ‘human’ and though we are presently considered ‘fringe’ we’re are on the forefront of discovery. I would argue we are even better placed than ‘plural systems’ who by their own definition exist due to trauma, because what we do as host/tulpa systems is more cooperative from the beginning, whereas system created by trauma is usually fractured and disruptive until all the personalities are reigned in under a collective agreement that allows a person to navigate real world systems in greater degrees of functionality.

 

I am going to first share with you a very precise and particular forward glance at our changing reality, something that is coming down the pike, and will no doubt transform society, and then leave it open for discussion between tulpas and host on how we are already navigating these unchartered waters, and maybe even make deliberate strides to be so well placed that our fringe status might change to the forerunners that help establish protocols, and future interaction patterns for society to emulate, just as surely as Jules Verne and HG Wells shaped the things to come.

 

The quote comes from Global Stretegic Trends- Out to 2045, which you can google for yourself and read the free PDF. I admit to not finding it at its source, though I do tend to read this sort of thing, especially if it comes from the World Health Organization: “Direct Interfacing:

 

“It is possible that direct brain to brain communication may be achieved by 2045, transforming ways of working… these methods could involve collaboration and using directly shared knowledge and experience between human (and potentially between humans and other species)… As wells as potentially transforming both sensing and decision making, direct brain linkage could have profound implications for social interaction and the notion of what it means to be an individual human being. Notions of individuality could be challenged, possibly leading to questioning of the loyalties and allegiances to organizations, as individual and group identities merge,”

 

There is so much here we could spends days dissecting it all, especially the part about 'other species," but I am most affected by the last sentence, the notions of individuality being challenged because I as a system already don’t operate in isolation, and though I may make command decisions, in truth I have embarked upon an inner collaboration that requires serious consideration of others. I am not just me. In truth, this should already within the framework of our communities, but it only takes a casual glance to note most communities don’t hold onto concepts of inclusivity as much as they tend towards exclusion and separation, as we are frequently blocking and challenging the sense of ‘other’ so much so that even our politics are so disparate in philosophies that we consider the opponent the enemy, as opposed to people who are working towards a better system for interacting. Even the tightest of human groups find ways to exclude other, and divide themselves further, resulting in quiet feuds that drive us ultimately apart.

 

Direct brain to brain interaction is likely to change everything, or the article wouldn’t have addressed the question of 'loyalties and allegiances'. Direct brain to brain may mean we will be forced to better collaborate, because we won’t be able to make decisions without considering the other in the equation. Most people think of themselves as themselves. A tulpamancer considers his or herself as a part of a greater community. We are by design, or accident, a reflection of that thing that is coming. Whether it is fate or happenstance, we may have unknowingly just made ourselves to be leaders, or guides, to the new world. Further, when brain to computer systems are so developed that a personality may navigate artificial landscapes, our tulpas may find themselves equally free, within that greater system and that, too is a potential game changer, as the people we meet in-system will suddenly have access to all of us. Who we truly are will no longer be a secret.

[GrayTheCat]

I'm not excited about brain-to-brain communication. By that point, a serious threat to being an individual will be advancing in it's final form.

 

To explain some context for my thoughts: People change and shape who they are based on their environment. Just to be upfront about this, I personally believe that both nurture and nature shape an individual. An individual has their own nature due their wiring, and their environment allows them to express a limited amount of that nature. For example, a person who's really good at STEM would excel if their environment promoted stem and sent them to college to get them their degree. Being less wealthy and having less access to these opportunities isn't always enough to suppress this trait because this person may be hard working, have friends and family to support them, and achieve their goal. However, if they are never exposed to STEM by living out in the middle of nowhere and live their whole life there, nurture and environment have successfully repressed their dreams of becoming an engineer because that was never an option to begin with.

 

Now Consider this: Normally, people are shaped by their environment. Now if say their environment was a brainwashing torture chamber where they are forced to forget everything about who they are and obey orders, then that could successfully suppress who they are as an individual. If people have the power to share thoughts with technology, then people will also have the power to code thoughts they want someone else to have. Fake thoughts, fake memories, all designed to control someone. Humans have learned how to manipulate and brainwash other humans for as long as humans have been around, and with new technology and science about the human mind people are forming better methods to control people. Even now, people are vulnerable to these attacks on their individuality just by using Facebook and Twitter to their advantage and manipulating them into feeling and thinking about things so they can be swayed to vote for their candidate or isolate themselves from their family because they "root for the enemy".

 

As a Tulpamancy system we have learned to have respect for each other's thoughts and desires. We can also consider each other's ideas and use them, which means that blending in small amounts is a naturally occurring process, and that's fine because both of us value the idea of being separate and we still see ourselves as separate individuals. If you link to separate brains that have the option to bail on each other, there's no requirement for respect or negotiation. In fact, personal attacks can be so powerful they can force someone to think differently, making the natural blending of "learning life lessons" become more extreme. If two minds are forced to negotiate, then my first question is why that situation was created in the first place. What exactly does one get out of forcing two humans to be forced to think of the other person? Other than to control people, I see no reason to merge people's minds perinatally.

 

This is obviously worst-case-scenario, and I have a knack for visualizing and fantasizing about how the future can become a living hell. I suppose in a world like this having the experience could be helpful, but if our brainwashing overloads really wanted to, they could merge Tulpamancy systems into one being and re-program whatever resulting entity was there to serve their cause.

 

---

 

I agree with Cat on the "why" part. Having access to someone else's thoughts would be the ultimate invasion of privacy, and it could pretty easily become a battle of "who thinks best" and after a fight a winner could be decided.

 

Cat's vision of the future is pretty pessimistic. I like the idea of talking to other people using telepathy, but I don't know if we would be thrown in the nuthouse for it. Maybe scientists would have figured out Tulpamancy by then and being a Tulpamancer is considered cool then.

 

Cat has thought about losing that sense of "your thoughts can only be seen by you" and what it would be like to talk to aliens who can read them. Due to Cat's pessimism, the aliens are probably a lot nicer than normal people, but I don't think it's unreasonable people could evolve defense mechanisms to protect themselves. Maybe using cyborg parts! The thought of having saved backups of your personality in case you get hacked just popped into my mind, and I don't really know what to do with that thought.

 

Also, to use one of Cat's arguments about humanity against her pessimistic world view, she said as a joke (but also seriously) that as we develop the technology to study the human mind, the human mind will change into a new thing, and no matter how good the technology is we will never be able to fully reverse-engineer the human brain. If your brain has a bunch of cyborg parts in it, don't those cyborg parts now officially count as your brain?

 

All I really care about is having the world being able to see me as well as accept me for who I am.

[Guest]

Hm.

 

[Hidden]

First of all my tulpas are most closely associated with quoigenic, but i'm not ruling out traumagenic, especially Ashley. I'm not taking any offense, just pointing out something. By having experienced your character, i can guess that your intentions were supportive and benign and at least they aren't meant to discriminate, but the statement about 'plural systems' may contain bias i don't understand. It seems poorly worded at worst, if that. I don't fully understand the terminology though, so there's every reason to think i took it wrong anyway. Although i don't consider myself a member of the DID community by any means, i've noticed a fued of sorts between our communities. The individuals i've seen have been nothing but respectful and tolerant to my system anyway. So in the interest of peace, i'd like our community to refrain from shots over the bow toward their community regardless of the number of shots they take at us. This is only because i don't think all DID systems necessarily share a stereotypical smug reluctance to believe in tulpamancy endogenic systems, nor that all self-identified traumagenic systems are less worthy of acceptance, nor do they necessarily manifest maliciously from the beginning, unless that's in the definition of that community and i've somehow missed that nuance. Don't take this out of proportion, it's just a minor note from a reformed snowflake.

 

Just given the nature, if i understood it correctly, of your later statements about inclusivity, i felt your statements about other 'plural systems' could safely be removed without any loss to the presentation. If you do so, being a MOD, you could also safely remove these statements within this hidden block, withy full permission and request.

 

However, don't change anything if i am wrong here, it serves as a good marker for logical and unemotionally biased misunderstandings.

[/hidden]

 

I do see our culture on a planet wide scale moving toward hive mind. We've been spoon fed what to think for generations now, hypnotized by shiney things and flashing lights into willingly giving all our personal information up in order to fit in and unlock opportunities such as social acceptance and car loans, all the while complaining about lost privacy and data breaches as a minor annoyance.

 

If you can believe that i've seen the future, it was a peaceful place, at least under the close supervision of intolerant watchdog AI in the most affluent zones. Freedom, liberty and privacy are given up entirely to law, order, and protection. With the added benefit of perfect surveillance, you can record and broadcast, if you wish, every moment of your life in full 3D, perfectly immersive reality through neural interfaces. This would of course include hive mind connections and advertising pay walls of course. And why would you need this clunky hapless phone as an interface, or the sadly outdated keyboard/mouse arrangement when you could choose which thoughts. Ideas, pictures, unique artistic visions, are to be posted just as clearly as speaking, but silently, instantly and from nearly anywhere.

 

Why would you deny the ability to watch fluff and follow your favorite celebrity if fully immersive 3D 5 senses realism. I'd give half my wealth for that, sure.

 

2045 eh... i highly doubt that, the last 20 years have surely seen remarkable improvements in technology, the internet did exist in 1998, so did forums and chat. So did keyboard and mouse, so did txt capable phones, so did VR headsets, and so did online multiplayer.

 

Beyond the differences in the sleekness of things, size and capabilities, things are still generally the same.

 

Go back 40 years and you begin to see huge differences, though in 1978 there were still mobile phones, but they were radio based as well, there were computers, just not personal ones as frequently, there were games, arcades, even multiplayer ones even then. The birth of posting and txting was done between nerds and hobbyists using various means as far as i can know well into the 70's.

 

Nerual interface, and brain to brain lucid communication could very well be in our future, but there will be many landings of prior enabling technology and acceptance which will have to come and go before anyone outside of military or university setting has access to it publicly.

 

Look how long it took to make e-books popular and the latest round of VR is losing popularity, once again, as we speak. (Based on a quick google search).

 

So, neural interfaces would certainly happen, and when they do they will most probably be welcome except with the following caveats as i see them:

 

1. Laws (hacking, virus, public safety, distracted driving/walking)

2. Privacy (18+, personally identifable information sharing, criminal interaction)

3. Profit (yes, profit will get in the way, because only the best technology deserves the highest price, and that interface will be highly desired and costly to support, especially when there are 50+ levels of service and bandwidth options, and of course it will still be way cheaper in Europe and unavailable in China.)

 

Expect overhyped and underdelivered shoddy attempts and startup busts by 2045, better attempts with AI enhancement by 2065, and reasonable attempts to get some subset of the above technology to the masses by 2085, and probably mandates by 2105. Remember, seat belts took 80 years to be perfected and only 10 years to be mandated after that.

 

Good luck future self, here's hoping for that tulpa-enabled holodeck that Geordi Laforge dreamed of.

[Hidden]

 

Hey! >:/

[/hidden]

 

After all that, my ultimate point is, i pitty the fool who would voluntarily or otherwise be subjected to my intrusive thoughts a year ago. Now, on the other hand, i could probably sell tickets to my current thoughts and make enough to afford that emmersive 3D technology. Of course my tulpas would have to, in some secrure way, be insulated from that interface without our consent, or no deal.

 

Edit: Cat and Ranger, excellent points, also SC, what an amazing topic!

[ShadowsDancing]

 ‘plural systems’ who by their own definition exist due to trauma

 

No. There are certainly (s) that self identify that way but plenty that do not. That definition belongs to the medical community.

 

Beyond the above bit of nit pickery? Spot on.

[solarchariot]

So, I hear from AB's hidden, and ShadowsDancing, that my understanding of the general plural systems definition is more fluid than how I expressed it, and though I did not mean it to be disparaging, but rather more of a distinction between Tulpamancy and DID, I accept it needs work. I would like to leave that artifact where it is for now, so that if there are any further redress to my bias, that can better help me differentiate the two, if there is one at all, I may be properly educated. I think one of the ways I see DID as different is due to the medical perspective that classifies it as a disorder because many of the people that are diagnosed with it are experiencing some sort of system dysfunction that requires greater assistant than those who never seek medical attention for the same. I do accept there is a continuum, even with DID, and so not every finds their lives disrupted. That's true across the board with almost anything, as hallucinations are not always negative or disparaging, but it's kindly voices that help people though life that don't get reported, because who would want that to go away. So, yeah, that is likely a bias I hold, I am re-examining it.

 

Cat... still thinking about your contribution. :)

[Lucilyn]

whooaaahh, brain-to-brain communication is actually on the horizon? we've been kinda hoping it wouldn't happen..

 

apparently Lumi has had the recurring idea of "qualia sharing" pop into his head for the last ~10 years, usually in a format like Youtube where you can browse for people's recorded experiences and experience them yourself, with popular mainstream.. qualias? being extreme sports and sex, but ultimately every sort of experience is shared, with creators being popular for sharing how it feels/thinks to play music or be a master of your craft, philosophize or maybe even do drugs, and of course experience nostalgia playing video games xD

 

thing is though, despite this often popping into his head at complete random, he's been kind of unsure if he wants it actually becoming a reality, because that would quickly change the entire human race. any close-minded world leaders who accidentally let themselves see the light.. whoops, world peace on its way. Assuming we don't fall into any illuminati mind-controlled world shenanigans, which is really a coin toss I guess, 1st world countries are very passive these days and regulations might stop people from doing anything worldwide insidious for long enough for everything to resolve well.. or illuminati-level organization(s) do get the power first and we go full, well, Illuminati-controls-the-world, y'know? I guess I choose to believe the former is more likely but you can't count out human greed

 

anyways, being able to share thinking will literally erase a huge part of what makes humans human: misunderstandings and miscommunication

 

... this isn't a bad thing, it would be the "next step in human evolution", but it would undeniably change who we are as a species, and of course spawn "human individuality" conservationist organizations and purists, which will probably get along peacefully as a non-singularity like the rest of the race will become? Idk, but this is a really big deal, Lumi's thought about it a ton because it comes to mind but he never quite thought "I sure hope that happens" if that makes sense

 

it'll sure help everyone understand tulpamancy, that's for sure, whatever it's called in 25 years anyway. I think it'll be a good gateway to teaching humans the potential to "be someone else" with the same human mind, but it'd probably be tested on people with DID way before they heard of us y'know? Same effect probly. It'll all just lead to the singularity of humans understanding each other and world peace, if we avoid Bad Ends, which should prove interesting..

 

 

 

whoops entire world wiped out by massive changes in climate, a plastic ocean and

well, we had a good run! So close! maybe in another billion years

[Guest Reilyn-Alley]

Lance, Mr Conspiracy, says there is no way the US, with all the trouble they have gone through generations of breeding and conditioning a passive and divided population of consumers, will suddenly let them unify. Cuz people wouldn't put up with all the crap when everyone realizes how equal we all are and gets "woke". It's conceivable that no government or nation would. Same reason they will never recognize us head mates as people, because they can't control or profit from us.

[Lucilyn]

that's pretty grim, but like I said, qualia sharing is a slippery slope.. you think our president might not choose to experience the qualia of someone who's

? basically, we can't know how this is gonna go until it's gone

[solarchariot]

I think I should make an addendum... if the future of computer interface is such that there is direct brain interaction with computers, Ai capable or not, the future Avatars may actually be our future tulpas...

[Guest]

In that case my system would be legion, what's stopping me from forming a tulpa army to take over the world government through sheer number of voters? Yes they would all vote for me, or it's the stocades on Crematoria for them. Shined eyes or not, no one gets off Crematoria.