Large Tulpa Systems, Parallel Processing, and Forcing Time

[Ranger]

Dec 2, 2025 Edit:

 

This post... is just bad. Lots of embarrassing anti-big system bias. I'm too dissociated to point out everything bad about it, just keep that in mind when reading this post. I think it would be too confusing to have it deleted or gutted, so I'll just leave this note here. Sorry.

 

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I have looked into this topic and discussed it repeatedly, but I would like to make a thread specifically to address the main criticism I have about large systems with most of their tulpas living in wonderland in parallel.

 

I am a skeptic of parallel processing, but I have gone back and forth considering the possibility it's real. I am motivated to preserve the practice and clear its name while simultaneously giving a solution to my other 16 headmates who can only wonderland when the switched-in fronter is around to watch.

 

My main concern is if parallel processing were real, it would allow for a host to have an unchecked number of tulpas living in wonderland they don't have to pay attention to. I find the idea invalidating to the idea hosts should spend time forcing their tulpas to begin with. Why force when they can force themselves in wonderland? Once you create the first tulpa, you can never talk to them again knowing they're hanging out in wonderland with however many other tulpas they made. They could have a city if tulpas you don't know about and you can visit if you want, or never again.

 

From a parallel processing critique perspective, I can't fathom the idea 20 tulpas can exist outside of their host's awareness, much less 400. Isn't parallel processing... hard to learn? Or is it really easy, as I have been told by some systems who claimed to have learned it naturally. And even then, isn't there a limit in how many times you can split the total amount of focus? I read one guide that suggested each headmate in parallel gets a fraction of the total pool of focus. If that's the case, can you even function with a 10th or a 20th of the focus of a singlet? Finally, let's say tulpas in parallel eat little to no resources. Why stop your system size at 20? Or really any arbitrary number? If being able to handle 10s or 100s of tulpas in the background isn't a problem, what is?

 

Assuming you have the ability to run 20 tulpas in the background, my biggest concern is that concept makes forcing and spending time with your tulpa irrelevant. Once you can think in parallel, why work on forcing at all? If they're truly independent and there's no need to worry about resources, they can create another tulpa they can interact with. This situation makes less sense if being truly independent means they don't have their own memories or are not vocal yet, but a walk-in that's already vocal could do this. If you have achieved vocality and the tulpa has some sense of self, they could be left in wonderland and never spoken to again.

 

If it is assumed parallel processing isn't real, it creates a bleak image of what could be going on. If you introduce the belief parallel processing isn't real and assume time spent away from the host is confabulation, then it looks like a host who came up with the perfect excuse to spend little to no time with them. It is incredibly common to watch tulpamancers struggle to find the time to force their tulpas, so it wouldn't be surprising to me that some hosts use parallel processing as an excuse to mistreat their system. It's an unfortunate blow to systems who are already seen with skepticism, especially because most of the parallel processing tulpa systems I have spoken to spend lots of time with their tulpas.

 

Even if it wasn't the case, it feels irresponsible for a host to leave their system by themselves in wonderland. It still seems like the right thing to do to go visit and communicate with them, even if they lack the desire to interact with the host. It would change the narrative of spend lots of time with your tulpa to help them grow as a person when they can do it on their own in wonderland. Or is there a liability on the host to make sure they invest time and energy to help their headmates develop? I deeply struggle with the idea the more optimal experience is against the idea hosts should spend time with their tulpas and also isn't an excuse for the host to not do any work to care for their headmates. I feel like those two things can't be mutually exclusive.

 

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I feel like there must be a reason for why parallel processing systems must spend quality time with their tulpas just like everyone else. I don't see these systems going around saying forcing is irrelevant, just that big systems are more manageable with parallel processing. It's not obvious at all to me why.

 

One thing I considered was the possibility a system has some kind of hyper multitasking ability rather than parallel processing. I've talked about this before in other threads, but the basic idea is a host gets so good at forcing their tulpas all the time to the point where their tulpas can do a lot more in wonderland and it requires little focus from the host. The main problem is it's really only specific to theorizing how a certain type of parallel processing system works (with debatable accuracy). However, this explanation doesn't explain how systems with mandatory memory seperation and "naturally occurring" parallel processing work. This explanation also doesn't prove parallel processing doesn't occurr for these systems, but it does suggest forcing is required to achieve this hyper multitasking state in the first place so it doesn't really matter if forcing is required for their additional parallel processing skill or not.

 

One thing I picked up that was really interesting to me but I know little about was the concept of time dilation. My basic understanding is wonderland time or real time is dilated so there's more fuzziness/partial amnesia over what the tulpas in wonderland are doing. I'm not sure if this is in favor of the tulpas being more productive in wonderland (time moves slower in wonderland than in real life) or why a host misses stuff (time moves faster in wonderland than in real life). I have never seen a parallel processing system use this to explain how things work nor do I understand if time dilation related to a strain of resources, so I can't say this resolves my concern if it's even related to it at all.

 

The other and more simple explanation I thought of is people in general are overwhelming and no one wants a city if tulpas because that's too much, but this can't be true for everyone. For every 3-5 systems that regulate system size, there's a system who leaves the gates open and their wonderland is like another universe. I'm not going to throw this group of systems into the "meta" category because I don't have a good reason to assume why a non-meta system can't function exactly like this. It's also possible the meta belief surfaced to explain why someone's wonderland is so huge and not the other way around.

 

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I'm curious what other explanations are out there for why a parallel processing system should or shouldn't need to force their tulpas beyond the point of reaching vocality (or is that in of itself unnecessary?) and any elaboration on the ideas or arguments I proposed here, especially the time dilation one.

 

Edit: I added another paragraph because I felt I was too vague about why I think not forcing your tulpas when you can parallel process is a bad thing.

Edited December 2, 2025 by Ranger

[YukariTelepath]

"If your tulpa could be active in wonderland without your attention, why would you ever talk to them again?" That's just a really bizarre take. People like to spend time with their headmates, I assume that's why anyone takes up tulpamancy, to spend time with tulpas... Ah yes, make a tulpa so you can leave them in wonderland and never speak to them again!

 

I've love to learn parallel processing, so that we can do more together, not less. So if I'm busy with work or literally anything else, they don't go inactive. So they can pay attention and think about things without stopping me from thinking as they do so. Parallel processing has huge potential for improving quality of life for systems.

 

As for large systems, I don't know much. I suspect many of them have limitations that they gloss over or seem unaware of. One large non-tulpa system I talked to would say things like "if we remember so and so we believe that means they were thinking of us" and "we don't really see the headspace, people just come and go and we haven't seen some people in ages." That doesn't seem promising for what state their non-fronting headmates are in. But I did talk to one host who had over 60 tulpas and it seems she does pay attention to them in their worlds all day. It's no small feat and would probably count as maladaptive daydreaming. My very tentative take is that if the system is putting lots of effort into building and maintaining activity for headmates, they probably have more going on than systems who just leave things be and put no effort in.

[Ranger]

18 minutes ago, YukariTelepath said:

"If your tulpa could be active in wonderland without your attention, why would you ever talk to them again?" That's just a really bizarre take. People like to spend time with their headmates, I assume that's why anyone takes up tulpamancy, to spend time with tulpas... Ah yes, make a tulpa so you can leave them in wonderland and never speak to them again!

 

I'm glad you pointed this out, because I didn't do a good job of explaining how I got here.

 

Running a big system is exhausting and time consuming. From my perspective, If I could parallel process, I could spend less time and get more out of it. For example, if Fernando and Evergreen wanted to chat, I would have to find time to sit with them and let them chat. If we could process in parallel, they could chat with each other while I'm writing a thread or talking to Gray. We could take two separate tasks that take 40 minutes each and do both at the same time, saving 40 minutes. It's in theory a huge time save, but also requires less time being spent by the fronter in general... Which begs the question if the time save can be abused.

 

I think that's the difference between bigger and smaller systems- there isn't that same problem of making sure everyone gets quality time.

 

I also worry more about systems who start with 10 tulpas and can parallel process. If the tulpas from the start focus more on themselves than the host and the host is used to doing little to participate, why would the host participate later?

 

18 minutes ago, YukariTelepath said:

I've love to learn parallel processing, so that we can do more together, not less. So if I'm busy with work or literally anything else, they don't go inactive. So they can pay attention and think about things without stopping me from thinking as they do so. Parallel processing has huge potential for improving quality of life for systems.

 

As for large systems, I don't know much. I suspect many of them have limitations that they gloss over or seem unaware of. One large non-tulpa system I talked to would say things like "if we remember so and so we believe that means they were thinking of us" and "we don't really see the headspace, people just come and go and we haven't seen some people in ages." That doesn't seem promising for what state their non-fronting headmates are in. But I did talk to one host who had over 60 tulpas and it seems she does pay attention to them in their worlds all day. It's no small feat and would probably count as maladaptive daydreaming. My very tentative take is that if the system is putting lots of effort into building and maintaining activity for headmates, they probably have more going on than systems who just leave things be and put no effort in.

 

I think this concern becomes irrelevant when a system can maintain several headmates being around at once all the time. To even achieve that, the system has to invest in constant forcing all the time anyway, so the risk of a host not spending time with their tulpas no longer exists.

 

This is more a concern for systems where the host goes about their day until they decide to visit their tulpas.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Ranger

[Luminesce]

7 hours ago, Ranger said:

Assuming you have the ability to run 20 tulpas in the background, my biggest concern is that concept makes forcing and spending time with your tulpa irrelevant. Once you can think in parallel, why work on forcing at all? If they're truly independent and there's no need to worry about resources, they can create another tulpa they can interact with.

 

This has been one of my concerns about huge systems who believed their tulpas were active all the time for years (though I didn't really consider it "parallel processing"). Believing your tulpas are getting along fine without your attention does mean you don't need to spend as much time with them.

 

Also, you see "no one doing that" - I having been around a while see it pretty differently. I think of systems like that as young systems most of the time. They may believe their tulpas are living in their own world doing whatever, but they keep interacting with their tulpas because the concept is still ~new to them and they've got tons of spare energy. I honestly don't think the "younger" systems I'm thinking of are still practicing tulpamancy in even close to the same way as they used to years later. Maybe some of them became the more exemplary systems, but I get the feeling some just dropped tulpamancy at some point too.

 

Anyways, there are also more exemplary systems, clearly not young, who have this belief & experience and still interact with their tulpas a healthy amount. I do know several aside from just Bear's, though they're not active anymore. They just have good motivation, beliefs, inspiration and so on to keep practicing tulpamancy lol, don't know what else to say. They are not the only examples of this though, you just haven't seen as many people (because the forum's a lot less active, and such people definitely now end up on the subreddit instead most the time). There are plenty of people who have this belief (and debatably experience, in the cases of really young people) who aren't particularly responsible hosts in the long run, and I imagine like all tulpamancers who quit, we simply don't see the results of their system dynamics and development when they lose interest in the phenomenon. This is the case with every young-seeming system I saw in 2013-2015, I don't know whether they still practice tulpamancy or not, but definitely none of them stuck around the community long-term. If they're still around, they're in those obscure ~tulpamancy discords, or using different usernames than they had here lol.

 

 

Oh, anyways, I agree with most things you brought up in your OP. But as for how this works, I've already talked about the possibilities elsewhere.