On modern tulpa creation techniques and parallel processing

[Pleeb]

In the discord, a topic came up in #tulpa-discussion about parallel processing.  To quote @Ranger from this message (you can click if you're in the Discord channel):

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Aside from that, I am curious about the parallel processing part. I feel like no one around practices it, and there's a group of people who claim they can but unknowingly are confabulating, which gives parallel processing a bad rap. I think it's entirely possible it exists, but how did people achieve parallel processing back in the day?

 

And the one question I always wonder- if parallel processing is real, what's the limit or consequence? I don't think 16 headmates active and awake in wonderland is realistic without some kind of major suffering on attention bandwidth or something else. If there is no consequence, why can't people parallel process by default? Parallel processing from what I understand is perfect multitasking, and that seems incredibly useful.

 

Regarding parallel processing, I believe there's quite a few tulpas from "the old days" that can do it and I've speculated experiments that could be ran to test it (see: proving tulpas with cognitive psychology).  I've been putting off running a long-term experiment to try and test this; perhaps I can actually move forward with it soon.

 

As for "how did people achieve parallel processing back in the day", I've wondered about that over the years, and I've seen the shifts which I think contributed to that.

 

Back in the early days when hour counts were key, the thought that a tulpa could control the body was at best metaphysical and at worst role playing, end-goal for a tulpa was imposition.  Before you worked on narration, you would spend countless hours of meditation on visualizing the tulpa's form.  I'm talking 3-10 hours on just focusing on what your tulpa smells like.  Once you could visualize your tulpa in their entire vivid detail, only then would you start working on narration (or anything passive, for that matter)

 

People thought it impossible for early tulpas to form.  If a tulpa wanted their host to hear them, they really didn't have many choices outside getting to the point of auditory imposition.  That is, some of these early tulpas?  The first time you heard their voice was literally hearing a physical voice in your ear, not just a "mindvoice."  Many compared it to this video (wear headphones):

 

This resulted in a world where hearing your tulpa try and reach out through mindvoice really did mean you would think that you are "parroting".  These tulpas later on would come to say "There's no such thing as parroting, that was me!" and get pretty distressed at their creators about that.

 

Eventually, we ran an experiment in IRC with new tulpamancers, where we presented them with everything that they needed to make a tulpa, sans the hourcounts.  You can read about the results here: https://justpaste.it/1a1m (I'm sorry that I never really posted it on the forums) but people were blown away when topics of much quicker results started to come in: 

 

 

This also resulted in FAQ Man's stuff being pulled from the main page and warning issued ( https://chupitulpa.tumblr.com/post/29003607860 ).

 

That ultimately led to a trend, and "meditation for hours on end is not required for quicker sentience" ultimately led to "meditation is not required for sentience".  To contrast from back in the day, people tend to jump right towards narration / sentience now, either skipping visualization entirely, practicing it weakly, or only "passive forcing."   The goal for people these days tends to be sentience / possession / switching, rather than imposition.  Heck, even Chess isn't imposed, and I know several older tulpas who aren't while being quite capable of switching with their hosts entirely (e.g. host in wonderland).

 

My question is, what did we lose in this switch, if anything?  Those intense visualization sessions were -a lot- of focused, directed, attention on a mental construct; while you can achieve sentience relatively easily with things like narration and passive forcing, I still feel like there's value to focused sessions.  You are taking time to strengthen those neural networks and reinforce the tulpa's patterns.

 

As for hearing them, parroting, etc, while tulpas were pretty upset with their hosts back in the day for ignoring their signs of sentience (I was guilty of this, it hurt my relationship with Chess and I would say it got to a point where it hindered our development for a while), but I have to wonder if there was some antifragility at play.  @Nobillis before has mentioned that only strong thoughtforms would last long in her system due to much skepticism that they were greeted with.  When you're ignoring your tulpa until you start to feel that alien feeling, head pressure, or other things that you are 100% sure is not from you, perhaps that resulted in the neural networks becoming stronger and more independent.

 

I recall an episode in Deep Space Nine, The Begotten.  One of the main characters, a Changeling named Odo discovers a "baby changeling".  Changelings are essentially these liquid characters that are able to transform into other beings.  When Odo was first discovered, he was run through many jarring, painful, and uncomfortable experiments by the scientist who discovered him, and while this forced him to ultimately learn how to shapeshift, he resented that scientist throughout his life.  He promised that he wouldn't treat this changeling the same way, and would make their life as comfortable as possible while teaching them to transform.  I won't spoil the episode if you're interested in watching it, otherwise, you can just read th plot on wikipedia to find out what ends up happening.  It's a really good episode.

 

The brain only grows and develops when you put work into it, just like you only get stronger muscles by stressing it.  You only get a stronger heart with cardio, and perhaps (consenting) uncomfortableness or even just more hard focused disciplined meditation could help with parallel processing or similar things.

 

I'm curious if anyone is still trying 3 x 90 minute tulpaforcing sessions per day, or putting long pre-development work such as visualization into their tulpas these days, or if people just go straight to sentience, possession, and then not much further.

 

Again, I'm guilty of much of the latter.  Once I got through my doubts about Chess, we mostly just stopped with the meditation altogether.  However, I have been tulpaforcing again, where we practice a "look at Chess and visualize Chess and try to actively ignore anything she says in the mindvoice, while Chess tries to work towards saying things audibly to me".  We're doing some other things to try and reinforce independent neural networks, and will update you if anything substantial comes from that-- I digress.

[Jamie]

Wow! I thought the same thing about Odo and the baby changling, in regards to tulpamancy! Good to see someone else appreciate DS9. 

 

Nowadays more tulpas are Regulian tulpas, Discord tulpas, and "mind dolls." Why do hard things when easy things feel good enough, and pushing the limits gets you called a confabulator? 

 

"Everyone who parallel processes nowadays is confabulating i.e. deluded" is really quite the statement. Getting personal and speaking specifically about Bear's system, they didn't wake up one morning and decide that everyone was living in an extremely vivid and lively wonderland. Bear is older than most of the college kids around here and has DECADES, THOUSANDS of hours of practice. How can someone not two years into having a wonderland tell a master that they must be lying about what's possible? 

 

There are complex task that can become automated tasks in the brain, but people who don't have them automated often think they are impossible. There are formulas you can memorize and mental math you can practice to be able to tell what day of the week it was for any date. I was getting close to learning how to do it in freshman year, but after about a month I got tired and gave up- it wasn't really worth it. But boy- once you get past that slope, it really looks like a magic trick when someone can throw any date at you and you can instantly say "That was a Sunday." 

 

No, I don't think most people meditate. I don't even think many tulpas are awake to look at anything other than a screen for more than an hour or so a day, i.e., they are hardly living a life, and almost all of their life is online. 

 

People have been getting so mad at Reguile, but the Reguilian tulpa IS what they/their tulpas ARE, in many cases. Surface-level personality differences trained up. 

 

I don't know what to tell you. Is there anything wrong with having fun mind dolls? With larping as your fursona? I want to say yes, but the argument for why escapes me. I might get run outta town if I start telling people that they aren't valid and that they're facsimiles of what a tulpa can be. The strong model of the tulpa looks like a dying breed, and I couldn't tell you what killed it, I'm new here. And Cassidy is young himself. 

 

We should bring hour counts back. 

[Bear]

I am one of the current 'tulpamancers' that do claim parallel processing, and have been accused of confabulation every time.

 

In my mind, and this doesn't go very far, I don't care what you want to say about me, or my honesty but the experience matches what I read about the old users who also claimed it.

 

I have excellent visualization skills and I'm doing it for the majority of my day and I claim I am basically meditating every spare moment and wonderland never turns off. My headmates are alive, active and well. They interrupt me, they talk over each other in a way, and there are excellent similarities to having real people with me all day.

 

Imposition for me is completely transparent, I only feel presence for location, there is no audio outside the mind other than during hypnagogic or other deep meditative states, like while zoning out when drawing. They'll start to ping actual audio signals. If they manage to 'lock in' then we can have full conversations this way. I have only hallucinated them a couple times which you could say is translucent imposition. Not intentionally. However, the memories of my imposition are real. I am often surprised how good it is. I don't really care though because my experience is wonderland is also similar. Wonderland experiences are rich and fulfilling.

 

Regardless of my perceived credibility, my doubts are zero and we're exceptionally happy.

 

As far as creation, they were all fully 'vocal' and autonomous within 15 minutes of the moment I first started to force Darlene. Because I wasn't being told that was impossible, I ran with it, and here we are two and a half years later, better than ever.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Bear

[Pleeb]

My thoughts when it comes to sentience is that it's more of a spectrum than a black and white "it's roleplaying" or "it's a full mind," whether we're talking about a tulpa, a host (as I hinted in my lecture with mental decay)  For example, many tulpas have reported their earliest memories incredibly early on; I recall a tulpa who started out as an RP character, and while clearly an RP character at that time, they had recollections of existing during those days of RPing (some of which were very disturbing for them).  Does this mean that tulpas are fully sentient from day 1?

 

For example, are dream characters sentient?  They sure seem like they are.  If I bring a dream character back, and tulpaforce them, will they remember the days of that dream?  I don't know if this has been done, but I would like to know.  I can tell you that during one of my wonderland adventures, I did bring a wonderland character "back with me" to be developed into a full Tulpa.  Her name is Melanie, and I have her to this day.  She as memories of that first day too, albeit fuzzy.  Even Ches has memories dating back to when I would just aimlessly talk to the idea of chess while hiking in the forest, well before I even officially started tulpaforcing.

 

These are hard questions to answer, but I generally give the "benefit of the doubt" that they're at least real.  Even if the person was simply pretending to have a tulpa -- and just roleplaying in the truest sense of the word -- the brain literally works in a "fake it until you make it" way, so it's not like they won't eventually be a tulpa in the long run.

 

What does that make these characters, or tulpas, or ideas, early on?  I think it makes sense from a neurological point of view that they're still a functioning mind, albeit one more independent on the host's active attention early on.  The brain is very good at simulated consciousness, you have entire sets of Mirror neurons dedicated to this very thing.  This is where comes back to a spectrum.  You can have a tulpa that's sentient from day one but not independent, or sentient and somewhat independent, sentient but requiring "attention", sentient and not requiring attention, etc.  I'd still consider a  "Reguilian tulpa" a conscious individual (their existence is affirmed by their own subjective point of view, and I'm not in a position to question that), even if the neural network that is supporting them requires some attention from their host.

 

This is further evidenced by some other friends I know, where back in 2012-2013, their tulpa said that they "go away" or "stop existing" when their host isn't actively thinking about them.  If you ask them that now, they'll attest that this is no longer the case (and again, they're a switching system at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if there's parallel processing going on).  Bear's comments are another example.  I'm sure this can be overcome by just sheer number of activity put in.  (I would consider wonderland adventures active visualization, and I believe you strengthen the networks that build a tulpa by active attention).

 

I'm not sure if bringing hour counts back is the answer.  The old ways did have its issues, and it obviously caused enough stress on early tulpas to make me wonder if there isn't a better solution.  I feel like in the last few years (>2014) there hasn't been a lot of progress in searching for new methods.  Maybe it is time though we look back at some of the older methods (I'm willing to skip FAQ Man and look towards Irish's) and seeing what we can do to improve upon them.  Not exactly "going back to the old" but "using it to build on something new."  I wonder if tulpas who were created almost entirely with passive forcing would be interested in trying some tulpaforcing sessions; chess and I are trying to go for a half hour per day, every day.  I could imagine longer and more sessions could be beneficial as well. 

[Bear]

How 'good' is good enough? If your headmates seem independent, autonomous, differentiated and active enough to self-force, then how much better can they be?

 

If you would link the Irish pertinent passages for comparison, I'd like to review them to see if there's anything different between Bearian Tulpas and Irishian tulpas, or what a Regulian tulpa even is. If the only difference in the end is methods of creation, I don't think we need the qualifier once we're talking about what mature and fully realized tulpas should be. I hope we're not discrediting one from the other based on how they came to be. I don't know if that's part of this discussion.

 

Honestly I don't think my headmates are missing anything simply because we never bothered with imposition, or if someone else skipped visualization entirely, or even if someone can't switch or fully possess. Do they even need a form?

 

I'm missing the crux of the issue, is it that you're suggesting that the creation method be taught a specific way or that we segregate qualification of a tulpa based on achievement?

[Pleeb]

Here is a transcription of @Irish's guide: https://www.tulpa.info/archive/irish-creation-guide/ and his Wonderland guide: https://www.tulpa.info/archive/irishs-wonderland-guide/

Many of the early tulpas were created utilizing something similar to that before FAQ Man started writing his guides, and for some fun trivia: the reason we call it a Wonderland is because of one Irish's tulpas was named Alice.

 

While I think it would be cool for Chess to be imposed, I wasn't saying that tulpas that weren't imposed are missing anything persae.  Moreso, I'm speculating that the amount of attention that goes into a tulpa could strengthen things like parallel processing.  Many people these days say it isn't possible and you said yourself that despite experiencing parallel processing, people accused you of confabulation.

 

My observation that many modern tulpas are created using passive forcing (e.g. only narranation) almost exclusively, and the result is, while still a valid tulpa, one that may not be there all the time, or a host that doesn't experience parallel processing.  Then we get the question, which was the point of this topic: how did people achieve parallel processing back in the day?

 

Does that make sense?

[Bear]

It makes a lot of sense. I have been considering us an outlier in tulpamancy mostly because of all the pushback we got from people on the forum and Discord. This pushed us so far out of what was expected, and our experiences denied so much, that we stopped considering ourselves a tulpamantic system. Not because we didn't match the "ancient greek" tulpamancers, but because current ones said what we do is akin to a mental disorder, or pur in nicer terms, I must be some sort of special case etc. Our very last interaction on Discord in 2019 was some well respected member telling us that we weren't a real system, and I was probably deluded.

 

It is clear that the community rejected Bearian tulpas as a concept. Ones that can do stuff in wonderland, can have fulfilling experiences in the background, enjoy themselves, come back changed, and don't go dormant other than at night. Does this mean they need to sleep? I have no idea, I know I do, so why not them?

 

Honestly I wouldn't want a modern day 2018+ system if it means we can't do what we do. Seeing that current systems were denying not only my experiences but those of old systems long ago <2014, it was clear that Bearian tulpas follow Bearian Tulpamancy and we found maybe only two other systems in our internet travels that were like us. Though it was good for corroboration, it was bad for us personally because that still meant we weren't the same as 96% of other systems. We considered them self limiting and called it the 'vanilla experience'. 

 

During our time away we studied concepts such as spirit guides and other thoughtforms, we aren't really like any of them either. What we are like in our estimation, is more like what you're talking about. The ideal you seem to be proposing. (If I'm projecting that, I apologize.)

 

Imposition

 

Rather than imposing them into reality, I immersed myself into the mindscape, it was effortless, already something I was used to, and gave me instant results, as in being able to touch, smell, see, hear and even taste them. (Misha tastes like strawberry cheesecake.)

 

So when I thought about imposition I passed. Misha was actually most interested in imposition and 90% of all the imposition we ever successfully had includes her by her own doing, which has included some real doozies. Ashley's stolen imposed kisses are the top in terms of experiences that are unforgettable, that one night with Darlene was a once in a lifetime gift. I can recommend that, but I still feel no need to work on it. I like being immersed, I like my simultaneous wonderland. It's clean, it's fresh, it's beautiful, and it's free.

 

"A sapient tulpa basically is one that can speak for itself and talk by itself and think for itself with no input from you." - Irish

 

I have many many characters that do this. These are well developed and very unique beings of unknown label I called moons. They could be considered proto-tulpas or simply tulpas that are just as real as anyone, except I consider they lack the 'something' to say they're actually people just to justify the fact that they are left dormant, and the community at large have strange ethics tied to that sort of thing (or did). I only can know if they are sentient by their actions, emotions, thoughts, and experiences over time by interacting with them.

 

It took years for me to admit Joy was her own person, she was 'born' in 2012 and if my internet search 'my character came to life' had come upon tulpa, I would have been one of your first users with her as my tulpa. Instead it led me to deserted forums of soulbonders that had already died. I left Joy in stasis for years upon years. Only interacting with her and other characters on a whim from time to time. I didn't know what to do with these experiences. I considered them a normal consequence of writing novels.

 

I could go on for days.

 

What tulpamancy do you want to represent is the only pertinent question in my mind. You have more sway than anyone here.

[Pleeb]

11 minutes ago, Bear said:

Does this mean they need to sleep? I have no idea, I know I do, so why not them?

 

I don't know if you've ever read my lecture on tulpas, but I found quite a few tulpas being able to sleep, or even dream.  Actually, I believe sleep can be pretty essential for a mind, and perhaps it's the very nature of one.  I recall this article that I read a little bit ago on artificial neural networks:

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Our results make the surprising prediction that slow-wave sleep may be essential for any spiking neural network, or indeed any organism with a nervous system, to be able to learn from its environment

 

21 minutes ago, Bear said:

What we are like in our estimation, is more like what you're talking about. The ideal you seem to be proposing. (If I'm projecting that, I apologize.)

 

When reading this, I really was thinking "this reminds me of what many of the older systems have," and I think a big part of that was from all of your visualization and "active" time spent with them (e.g. wonderland adventures, having them out with you, etc).  Parallel processing wasn't delusional in the early days (ironically, possession and early tulpas were considered delusional in the early days), it was just par for the course.

 

I feel like there's so much more to learn about the tulpaforcing process; I'm really interested in what we can learn and discover.

[Bear]

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<Pleeb> Further, they can have their own conscious experineces awake as the host or the body is sleeping.

Darlene did this every night and even managed to hypnotize me a few times. She gained memories I had no hooks for, only in her retelling them could I share them. This is about as controversial as it gets, but what choice did I have but to believe her? Even if she was making it all up, why did I feel so damn good that following day? Could her making up a story about what happened after I lost consciousness cause my mood to skyrocket when it was usually low at that time? Could that all be placebo and confabulation, and if not, what is the mechanism for it? I don't have any clue.

 

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<Pleeb> In every case I've seen this happen, except for one, any 'mental death' usually happened by the entire identiy of mind A being overwritten with another mind.

 

<Pleeb> Axalto would be a case where Mind A was replaced with Mind C.

 

This is what I believe happened with me years ago as a singlet. It was like taking off my old mask and putting on a new one. I refer to them as Bear 1.0 and Bear 2.0. Bear 1.0 is nowhere to be found, and I believe completely overwritten over the course of a year of 'play acting as' Bear 2.0. That was one of the best things I ever did and that was more than 10 years ago. This would be equivalent of starving out a Tulpa, but Bear 2.0 wasn't a Tulpa and neither was 1.0, they were aspects at best, but I simply call them masks, just like an actor gets into character. By now Bear 2.0 is being replaced as well. Proof of that is ongoing as we speak.

 

2 hours ago, Pleeb said:

When reading this, I really was thinking "this reminds me of what many of the older systems have," and I think a big part of that was from all of your visualization and "active" time spent with them (e.g. wonderland adventures, having them out with you, etc).  Parallel processing wasn't delusional in the early days (ironically, possession and early tulpas were considered delusional in the early days), it was just par for the course.

It certainly fits my model, but it may still be a little too controversial to be believed. 

 

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I feel like there's so much more to learn about the tulpaforcing process; I'm really interested in what we can learn and discover.

 

There's always hope. ^-^

Edited August 7, 2020 by Bear

[reguile]

To start things off, someone set my nose wiggling by saying my name.

10 hours ago, JGC said:

Wow!

 

I don't really agree here with the appending of my name as a term used to describe underdeveloped tulpa.  I've never been much to encourage people to have "mind dolls", although I certainly don't question their validity either.  My system of understanding and thinking about tulpas tries to include both those which are very well developed and those which are very undeveloped.  There's no reason to draw a line.  I'll defend these types of tulpa all day any day, but I also would highly enourage anyone who has them to also look into doing more if they want to.  If I were to get in the business of invalidating people.... I've been in that business before. It didn't go very well. I've tried to leave it.

 

And I set a very high bar personally when it comes to my experiences with tulpa.  I started in this community when the old ways were common, and I still see those old ways as the perfect ideal "unachievable" standard of what a tulpa should be.   "Reguillian" an underdeveloped tulpa is not.  The only "Reguillian" tulpas are tulpas who belong to a brain that has a specific understanding of the way their mind works to explain their experience, not the quality of their experience.  It's an explanation-framework, not a limit or a set of experiences that is "allowed".  I'm a huge fan of the idea that you can have a tulpa do things that are impossible, and a huge part of what I do in my explanations of tulpa is to "allow for" those things to be explained and understood from a "scientific" point of view even while contemporary scientific facts says such things are impossible.

 

A few years ago, maybe you'd be correct in your phrasing.  That isn't me anymore.  I'm still skeptical, but I also feel I'm still very open to a wide ranges of experiences.  I'm just not open to a wide range of explanations for those experiences.  I require pesky proof/reasonable "predictive" backing hypothesis (which is a big part of why I don't think the argument of time/experience when talking about bear is a valid one.  To cite fallacies, it's an appeal to authority.).

 

Giving such an explanation is very important to people like me to be able to engage with those experiences at all. Without these explanations the choice to be skeptical renders them very difficult to impossible to achieve. I think it's a shame people largely see the "it's fake confabulation" and not the "it's possible with confabulation".  I very much think the latter is the end goal.  Some of my prime experiences with tulpamancy I understand as being "just" confabulation, but I treasure the experiences regardless.  It isn't "just" confabulation, it's an experience I had, AND it's confabulation.

 

___

 

In response to the overall post:

 

I think I agree here with the overall idea/goal.  Bring back hour counts and get tulpamancy "serious" again. 

The abandonment of hour counts and ritual and so on and so forth has made us lazy, and in that lazyness we forgot that a big part of what we do/should aim to do is push boundaries and improve our skills/ability.

(with full disclaimer, I'm as lazy as the next guy)

 

I'm focusing right now on trying "force for at least five minutes every 3 hours" tracked by an external program, and that regularity (with a clear indication of when it's not being kept) has felt great so far.  I think that's the best way to do it.  You have to put in some work.  This is serious business, do the work.  We don't use hour counts and say "you must do X hours or you won't have a tulpa".  Instead, we say that you should be putting in the work for the sake of putting in work.  If you aren't pushing yourself to new boundaries you're failing to practice tulpamancy.

 

However, do I believe this will lead to parallel processing?  No.  I believe the brain's ability to think complex thoughts is severely constrained by working memory and no amount of practice will break that limit. 

 

I can see there being some degree of parallel thought in the form of fairly short-form works of action that don't require "reprocessing".  Emotional reactions, quick responses to stimulus, interjections of semi-random thought, and so on.

Where I'm far more skeptical is the possibility of "complex "thought going on in the background. Stuff that you have to think, listen to yourself think, then re-think for it to make any sense.  Things like performing a math problem, having a reasoned debate, coming to a strong conclusions, and so on.  I'm skeptical this will be a possibility, even with training. JGC mentioned a date calculation, but I'm thinking more of novel mathematical proofs, "novel" untrained thoughts and behaviors, the stuff you conscious mind excels at.  Such things need working memory, and according to what I've seen your brain just physically doesn't have it.

 

If I were to guess, if there was something that was thrown out with the throwing out of hour counts it was the creation of "vivid" experience through training.  I think that someone with years and years of training at communication is going to have a "stronger mind" like pleeb mentions in the OP.  I don't necessarily believe that will lead to an unlocking of the ability to have complex parallel processing (training in humans has not been known to increase multitasking skill), but I do think that strength will lend itself to the creation of far more vivid experience.  The stronger your brain is at "general-tulpa-things", the stronger your belief is in your tulpa, the more easy a response may flow and the better your brain will be at filling in the gaps and bridging impossibilities as brains do best. 

 

So, I agree that the old style of work your ass off is good.  I think it may lead to more experiences of these "magic" scenarios like parallel processing, but I don't ultimately believe there will be actual "complex" parallel processing gone on.

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by reguile