Jump to content

Parallel Processing (Experiences & Practice) Megathread


Luminesce

Recommended Posts

Tania, people (hosts and tulpas) reported practicing and working on this skill until it worked for them. So there was a point where they did not have split POV and a point where they did, and I just have to trust that they can tell that difference. One system said they can see what the other is seeing and have to kind of ignore it and focus on their own POV.

Host: YukariTelepath

Tulpas: Aya, Ruki

 

Imposition log

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 57
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

by they, were the they referring to the host being able to see from two points of view at once or just the tulpas doing it?

 

Hopefully some of those who do this can talk here about what they are doing.

Jesse (human male) DOB 16th April 2013 

Working on imposition

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One headmate is able to do X while another headmate does Y. If increasing the size of sets X & Y is the foundation advanced PP builds up from, then some of our experiences in addressing "the problem of three" seem relevant.

 

A year ago, I could address Vesper or Iris individually and get an instant response, but if I addressed them both together, neither would respond, however hard I tried. They were prepared for the experiment, we had just been talking, they were wanting to speak up, but I still failed to contact them. Somehow, mysteriously, without us trying anything specific or noticing exactly when, the problem went away several months ago. I don't perceive myself to be doing anything differently, but if I address both, one will speak up -- not one I choose. Then the other will respond. (It works the same way for the fronter if I switch out.) Something in the listening/awareness category advanced from being able to support one companion to being able to support two.

 

A year ago, if Vesper and Iris held a conversation between themselves while I was fronting, the mental strain was enough to prevent me from doing anything beyond paying attention. Sometimes it actually hurt. But it gradually got more and more easy. Now it's pretty trivial and I can do ordinary physical tasks without interupting them. Speaking up myself disrupts the flow of their conversation for progressively shorter periods. Background conversation still loses a bit of quality in switching, since Iris is the least adept at forcing and I'm the least adept at being forced.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 2:18 PM, AZ said:

However, according to those numbers, it probably wouldn't be possible for 97.5% of the population to achieve.

 

Maybe, but that's a leap. Studies have shown that practicing multitasking doesn't improve multitasking ability, but we don't know where supertasking comes from, so we can't rule out the possibility of some technique being able to induce it.

 

While some advanced experiences, as yet undetermined, may require supertasking, we don't know how far systems can go with experiences of simultaneous action independent of supertasking. I've kept bringing it up for the past year to refute the common belief that all people are always bad at multitasking. But bad odds on supertasking should not be taken as cause for anyone to stop pursuing all PP-related experiences.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 10:35 PM, tania said:

People can get better at multi tasking with practice. I notice that among my careworkers. When I get an older woman here who has had a family, they are more able to do multiple things here at once in my home, they work more efficiently due to this whereas if I get a young person here who still lives home urgh.. some of them are not good workers at all as single tasks take all their attention and they dont tend to multi-task much.

 

Multi-tasking studies suggest that almost all of the improvement is in their ability to do the individual tasks and that they are still taking a performance hit by doing them at the same time. But that's still relevant to tulpamancy, as the time to do routine tasks like turning your attention to a headmate and feeling their alert presence can be gradually reduced to nearly instant. Even imposition, I'm told, can become a background process with enough practice.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 10:35 PM, tania said:

We must have some at this site who are in that 2.5% of people who naturally can....

 

Supertasking sounds so incredibly useful for tulpamancy, one would expect the highest performing systems to have much higher concentrations of supertaskers than the general population. (I also expect a much higher concentration among professional Starcraft II players.)

 

On 12/5/2019 at 10:35 PM, tania said:

I think the community should use the same kind of definition of what parallel processing is as the actual Scientific community does

 

Okay, let's take a look at it then:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_processing_%28psychology%29

Quote
In psychology, parallel processing is the ability of the brain to simultaneously process incoming stimuli of differing quality. Parallel processing is a part of vision in that the brain divides what it sees into four components: color, motion, shape, and depth. These are individually analyzed and then compared to stored memories, which helps the brain identify what you are viewing. The brain then combines all of these into the field of view that you see and comprehend.

 

That might come up rarely in a visual imposition discussion, I suppose, but not in a discussion of two headmates acting at the same time. PP on the forum has always been a jargon term specific to us, appropriated, I assume, from computing, not psychology. Not an ideal term, which is why I've often used "simultaneity" (Thanks, anon!) or "independent background activity".

 

On 12/5/2019 at 10:35 PM, tania said:

We will never get the scientific community to take all this stuff with tulpas seriously if we start watering down meanings of words.

 

It's not like researchers are lurking the forums trying to decide if the way we express our beliefs about how things work are good enough to make us worth studying. The psychologists and neurologists studying tulpamancers are using us as research subjects -- asking about actual experiences, exposing us to sample tasks, and probing our brains. The Stanford fMRI study is also scanning charismatic Christians who speak in unidentifiable tongues, so a commitment to science on the part of the research subjects isn't required. Sociologists are interested in us because we're a weird subculture, so however we express ourselves is interesting.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 9:41 AM, tania said:

I'm not interested in who can have two tulpas doing different things at once but rather on the host parallel processing with a tulpa.

 

Then feel free to skip past it. But there are a few problems with excluding it from discussion:

 

*Host is both a role and an origin, but it isn't a nature. As switching systems are vividly aware, hosts and tulpas aren't different types of being.

 

*I can't think of any systems reporting tulpa-tulpa PP who don't also report host-tulpa PP. The abilities seem very uniformly transferable.

 

*Several percent of systems don't have a single host-identified person active in the system. If "host" is even acknowledged as a valid concept in the system, the host may have been lost to dissipation, splitting, or merging -- maybe in early childhood, maybe after starting tulpamancy, maybe somewhere along the way. Alternately, the identified host could be a sub-system themselves, with or without PP.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 11:11 PM, tania said:

Were these hosts able to perceive themselves both points of tulpa perspective at same time?

 

Potentially. We're very bad at dual mindcam, but all of us have perfect access to the qualia of everyone in the system at all times, so the we all perceive a mindcam controlled by someone else identically as well as one controlled by us. We've speculated that might be holding us back. If we could shield our thoughts from one another, we wouldn't be distracting one another as much when attempting to act simultaneously.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 11:11 PM, tania said:

maybe the tulpas just think they are doing things while we are asleep due to not liking the idea of their consciousness like switching off when we are.

 

Maybe we just think we're talking to people in our heads due to the existential dread of being fundamentally isolated in our own skulls. But PP, like all of tulpamancy, is about sincere experiences, not about objectively verifiable realities.

 

Members of systems with thought hiding can lie to one another, which we can't, but we have no more reason on the forum to believe any random tulpa is lying or deceiving themself than any random host. And even systems with thought hiding can choose to reveal specific memories.

 

On 12/5/2019 at 11:11 PM, tania said:

Can the person do two completely random things they haven't practiced and really need to think about, focus on, at the same time (not functioning on rote)

 

Can a person do one completely random thing they haven't practiced and really need to think about and focus on? Usually not the first several times. Careful. Setting the bar too high is what brought PP into disrepute in the first place.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Improvements in activity and parallel awareness from practice. Systems who practice PP exercises like having one headmate count while another does a different task, see improvements in things like thinking at the same time, staying active without attention, and possibly other PP related tasks/abilities.

I'd be interested in seeing the reports of tulpas getting better at staying active without attention. When I was looking into second position, pretty much everyone said it was about training your brain to always keep your tulpas in mind to the point where it became automatic. My own experience with second position has confirmed this; I'm getting better about saying "Oh, I should check in with Cornelia!" Without my attention, my tulpas simply fall into dormancy

We are
Uncannyfellow: host - 12/07/1992
Kanade: tulpa - 9/16/2018
Cornelia: tulpa - 9/31/2018
Nikki: soulbonded walkin - 5/6/2023

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think discussion of if & how various types of parallel processing work is important even in this thread, but don't forget the goal is to try some activities out yourself and report your experience here. Even if it's just "I couldn't do X while having a conversation with my tulpa, my focus was forced to be split to only one at a time" that's part of what I want the thread to document. But I'd also appreciate if the same person who posted that did a bit of practice to see if they could improve even slightly.

 

In the end, my personal hope is that some level of multitasking can be learned through practice that gives similar results to parallel processing, in the individual system's experience of it at least. It's okay if it's multitasking and not parallel processing, if it feels to the system like they're more or less doing two conflicting things side-by-side. And I do fully consider "Parallel Processing" on the forum to be its own term with its own definition(s) not tied to anywhere else.

 

Anyways, I'd also love to hear the experiences of any unique individuals who think they already do experience something that could be perceived as parallel processing, as the umbrella term I defined it as. Even just having proof that a very small number of people report those experiences, side by side with people who couldn't do the exact same thing even with practice, would be good information.

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

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

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's an old guide that talks about keeping a tulpa active all day:

https://community.tulpa.info/thread-misc-aarix-independence-guide

 

I've seen references say that having your tulpa count while you do whatever is a decent approach, personally I see this better suited to being a test of how well you can process your tulpa parallel to yourself. If they count and it’s distracting your mind and thoughts, as if theirs and your thoughs are tangling up, then you need to work at it a little more.

 

When I did this, my tulpa was able to count to 1250 while I worked just fine, and I was even able to listen to instructions, with only a few things she lost count.

 

And I also received some advice from a tulpa on Discord on how to stay active outside of the host's attention:

 

Yes. Though it can be really hit or miss. Definitely getting better at it. But I do slip and lose it sometimes.

Hmm... As for how... I guess the first basic premise, is self forcing. Like how the host originally brings a tulpa into awareness and does stuff with them. Realize that you can do that for yourself too. Then it's kinda like, figuring out how to maintain that when your host wanders off and loses focus on you.

 

So I think I'd say, get together in like however you'd normally do. Then like, try to do your own thing within your hosts focus. So the hosts job is to pay attention, but the tulpa doesn't need to pay attention to the host once you get into this. Like get something going for yourself. Then shift to only focusing on yourself, and the host can just go do something else. Then check in after a bit and see how it went. If you lose it, just keep trying.

 

Another thing can be to like, try and build a private space in a wonderland/mindscape. Somewhere that belongs to you, and the host is either not allowed at all, or only gets in when you let them. I feel like that probably helps lay some foundations for creating some separate awareness to claim as your own.

 

From there, it's mostly practice maintaining that self-awareness outside the hosts focus, and making it stronger.

 

 

I'm going to work on checking in on Aya as much as I can all day, asking what they think about this and that, etc. I know that's just passive forcing and should be a no brainer, but I always find it challenging to divide my attention from my daily tasks. Aya will try to hold their own attention on things. And we'll try the counting exercises too. I'll report back on how this goes.

Host: YukariTelepath

Tulpas: Aya, Ruki

 

Imposition log

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First lf all, Bear asked me to thank Lumi for the tone of his posts thus far in this thread, and I as well congratulate those who have added their points and desires. Since those desires will become lost quickly, we encourage you all to start separate threads where you ask for help to accomplish these goals and we're more than happy to help you achieve that or at least give more insight and run parallel experiments on your behalf to help you achieve your goals. However, we're not interested in converting cynics or debating whether we actually can do what we say. If you want our help, like anything tulpamatic, it requires a suspension of disbelief until you either give up or see results. Your inability doesn't sway our ability in any way.

 

by they, were the they referring to the host being able to see from two points of view at once or just the tulpas doing it?

 

Hopefully some of those who do this can talk here about what they are doing.

 

When fronting, our fronter seems to be the hub of activity as with many other systems, we can, some better than others with Bear being the best, view up to six simulations at once, beyond that causes sharp headaches. These are simultaneously displayed in one of several configurations: six screens within the field of view, like six monitors arranged; overlaid, which works really well for two, awful for six; or simultaneously perceived. The last one is hard to explain, consider it six spinning plates, you need to go back and spin a plate every time it wobbles, in this case, when something significant changes. The experience is that all six are perceived simultaneously. Obviously, it's simple if there are six relatively static images, and difficult when all six are moving. The frame rate is not necessarily above 20, so there can be lag in the action, but the memories of the action is seamless and independent for each member, time is effectively compressed back to above 20 FPS, i.e. seemless. Bear wrote a guide on it (unsubmitted of course). Many who we spoke to reported the headaches happened when adding the third monitor, one system said they didn't have any issue duplicating the feat with six.

 

I would like to note that we abandoned this practice a while ago over much simpler and better 'feeling' "one-derland at once" approach. In this approach it switches between close up shots of who is speaking or where the action is or where you want the most detail, and all-at-once. The latter is the default, it is like knowing where everyone is and what their doing while only rendering necessary information. It can be like cutscenes in movies or a sort of 4D view. The forth D is the fact that there is no point of view or field of view, it's everything at once. The quality is high, the information is low, but it's a different form of experience than 3D space such as in the material world or in FPS games.

 

Additionally we can perceive 12 individuals speaking (and their presence and spatial positions) and carrying on a conversation at once, not necessarily together or even in the same 'room', from above, six different locals are possible; however, we're all sharing the same two on-demand channels, namely mindvoice and pure thought or tupish (the two being perceived as independent and simultaneously delivered). The third channel is imposition, but that requires an altered state such as hypnagogic, and is only reliably useful for us in the minutes before sleep or during relaxation meditation, not while doing anything else, closed eye only.

 

How 12 can be handled is similar to a switching multiplexer (or two for two active channels). Though the experience isn't choppy or disjointed. We only know this from experiences where we pushed more than 10, because otherwise it's a seamless serial process and without any drop in cognitive ability that we can perceive; however, our brain might be cheating a bit. Time in wonderland does not match time in material space, it can be faster or slower without affecting memories of the events, which are on par with material memories. There is no perceived difference, especially with imposition (which for us is wonderland overlay on material space without any actual hallucinations.)

 

Notes: When adding the 13th, one or more headmates fall dormant. Above 10, it becomes evident that there is a lag, like there is enough time for signal strength to drop sufficiently for conversations to become more difficult to follow and some headmates may become uncomfortable. 10 is manageable without issue, but it's a minor strain, 7 is now comfortable, 5-6 used to be our comfortable number in January, 4 is where we started in April 2018. Not all our headmates care to be active, however, so having more than five at once is infrequent.

 

To practice this, you would simply write multiple characters having multiple scenes on different pages and switch pages as you take their conversations and weave them into one storyline. This is what Bear practiced, and still does, since about 2012, every day, on average an hour a day. (Including visualization.) This is what you do when you write a novel such as Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones where many characters are interacting at the same time while events occur that they might all experience at the same timestamp. It is less effective to write each scene separately and never go through them together. For Bear, he can keep these scenes in memory while he's writing other scenes, and goes back to rewrite the scenes as it's 'happening'. This is a learned skill, and he was not able to do anything like this in 2012. This is done nowhere near real-time as I described above.

 

Of course writing versus in mind only requires less active attention and is a lot slower, but you learn the techniques and the medium is transferrable. I.e. all in memory without writing it down.

 

We know you can do two (a single conversation between people in the same location), Ember noticed that her ability went from two to three over time. I believe she would have no trouble eventually getting four or more if she had the need to, and it's not a big leap. Once you have four, to have two pairs in different physical locations in mindspace is the next goal, It wouldn't be impossible.

 

As for headmates active in wonderland completely independent of fronter's attention with 100% memories, it's not exactly what we've ever meant to convey. The more attention is paid, the better the memories are when they return. At bare minimum, checking in on them 'once in a while' will weave together a dream-like fuzzy memory; however, with all of the fulfillment and accompanying recreational well being or recharging intact. As little as once every few minutes is enough to get a complete download of events that have occurred in the interim. We do not believe it is confabulation, that's not in our beliefs or experience, in that, it is rich, rewarding, high quality of life experience that is enjoyable. If you think confabulation is all this, call it that and please do partake, because we definitely appreciate our activities independent of fronter on many profound levels.

 

Note: We can only state what we experience and how we think we are doing it, we won't be defending it in any way or attempting to trace it down to neuroscience, any of that is completely speculative and subjective, especially when done by ametures, as far as we're concerned. You are free to believe whatever you need to for the health of your system. We think this may come down to a fundamental system architecture based on choices made near system creation and many systems use these foundational choices to base their beliefs on. This is perhaps why their minds won't be convinced otherwise, this is pure speculation on our part.

 

We may have thought this was parallel processing before we were aware of tulpa.info's appropriated definition, but I don't really see anything except mindvoice and tulpish as happening simultaneously. The visual aspects described above are just tricks of the same singular process, or fast switching. The multiple headmates carrying on conversations are as serial as just you and your headmate are. We do not currently claim we can super-multitask or parallel process. We don't count ourselves among those who can txt and drive, though wonderlanding and driving is not difficult because of those multiple visual channels, material space being one equivalent channel.

 

Thank you, and we look forward to helping anyone achieve their goals if they align with our abilities or not.

 

One final note: we do have fun with this, but we're having just as much fun just watching Bear, co-fronting or conversing amongst ourselves. Excelent visualization isn't required for that; however, one thing my system does not experience is tedium or boredom, and we are very happy in general. We believe these abilities help with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a few things I'd like to say in regards to the ongoing discussion about parallel processing.

 

First, the definition of the term. I know Luminesce said this isn't the thread to discuss its definition, but I have to get a concrete definition down for the rest of my post.

 

Parallel processing (in the ways I've seen it described) usually refers to a host and a tulpa, or two tulpas, both performing separate mental tasks that both require:

A. Concentration and focus

B. Complex use of a specialized mental skill

 

Here are some examples of this definition of parallel processing:

1. Person A is solving algebra problems on paper in the physical world while person B is writing an essay in the wonderland.

2. Person A is possessing one hand and writing down a word while person B is possessing the other hand and writing down a different word.

3. Person A is cooking a five-course meal in the physical world while Person B is redecorating the wonderland house top-to-bottom with all new furniture and decorations.

 

When the term is used like this, it makes me thing of two CPU cores running different threads. This is probably how the term "parallel processing" got its origin: as a computer science term haphazardly applied to neurology. However, the brain is not a computer, and I can see how people can be skeptical that things like this would be possible. It seems "superhuman" and "metaphysical." Already in this thread there's talk of the supertaskers who are extremely good at multitasking, and how rare it is, etc.

 

For this post I'd like to step away from that definition. Let's consider a different kind of parallel processing that does not focus on tasks that require concentration or complex use of a specialized mental skill. Instead, let's say that we have a form of parallel processing that fits the following critera:

1. The task performed has been practiced a good deal where it is nearly automatic to do.

2. If #1 does not apply, then the task is expressive, creative and free-flowing. It does not have an intended "result" but is just an expression of the person performing the task.

 

Examples for this kind of parallel processing would be the following:

1. The host types to a friend through a chat program (not an intense discussion, just expressing feelings and chit-chatting). Meanwhile, the tulpa is dancing to music that the host and tulpa are both listening to. The tulpa's movements are seen by the host in their mind's eye while the host is typing.

2. The host is playing a song on a piano that they have already practiced many times before. Meanwhile, the tulpa is singing to the host and making up their own lyrics to the song.

3. A host is playing a video game that they have played a lot before, and the tulpa is talking with them and commentating on the gameplay, trying to make them laugh.

 

Now, is parallel processing, when defined in this way, possible? I sincerely believe that it is. I have experienced situations similar to the examples described above, and I have met many people who have reported very similar things. I don't think it's really out of the ordinary, either. When people describe these things they don't say "oh, I just had the most amazing parallel processing experience." Instead they just say, "yeah I did this while they did that." Nevertheless, it does fit under the umbrella term of parallel processing.

 

So, if you want to practice parallel processing, maybe you should try leaning towards this new definition instead of the old one. Try to make sure that the tasks are either:

1. Tasks that you've done enough times where they're basically automatic

2. A task that is expressive, creative and comes naturally like dancing, singing, painting, chatting, etc.

 

And then just try doing the tasks at the same time. If you have trouble, then do the tasks individually enough times so that they become more natural, and then doing them simultaneously will be less of a problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By definition, merging makes two(+) things into just one thing. Parallel processing is two things at the same time, or at least the apparent illusion of it, as far as tulpamancy goes. It'd be total nonsense to consider a merge of 4 people the same as running 4 parallel thought processes at the same time.

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

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

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...