Censuses: Log, Research, Discussion

[GrayTheCat]

My desired career path is to become a data scientist, and I think conducting a tulpa census could be a good way to build my skills and apply them in a realistic setting.

 

I created a Lounge thread instead of a Research or General Discussion thread because I may not achieve my goal and I would like the freedom to talk about statistical methods, explore deep rabbit holes, or rant about my opinions of the process. I want to use this thread as a log of information to keep what I find in one place, allow anyone to casually drop in and contribute, and allow for others interested in making a census to use information from this thread as a starting point. My goal is to add some effort to this project at least once a week.
 

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I'll save this section of the OP for any resources I deem to be incredibly useful or important. For now, I'll leave this message until I add some later.

 

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Some thoughts on a previous census attempt:
 

Spoiler

 

There was interest in working on the census behind closed doors, and like the GAT, interest fell apart. While Ranger was sorting out GAT stuff, I  didn't want to think about possible policy stuff while Ranger was already doing that (it's boring enough with one headmate thinking about it!) and I was frustrated by the lack of direction and interest in the project. I think the problem was it choked behind closed doors, different people had different visions for what to do, and without a plan there was nothing left to be excited about. While some progress was made, it wasn't sustainable.

Since it was a private effort, I can't share the resources people created without their permission. I can however provide links that were passed around, the rough draft of some questions I wrote, etc. A lot of the ideas discussed there will probably end up here in some way, shape, or form.

 

 

There are lots of questions I have regarding creating a census. The general ones boil down to the following:

 

• How do I survey a population of tulpa systems?
• How do I conduct an ethical survey, especially considering underaged tulpa systems?
• How do I interpret and organize the data? Are there statistical approaches I need to consider I don't know yet?
• What does the community want to know about tulpamancers and tulpas?

 

I'll spend most of this thread talking about different angles of these questions, floating ideas, etc.

The tulpa census has been done multiple times before. However, current interest has crumbled. While I have some parts of a census I could quickly whip together and hastily put out there, I believe there is more I can add to the idea. While I deeply appreciate and applaud the dedication and grit it took to get the original tulpa census surveys out and data reported in the first place, I wonder as a future statistician if I can take it to the next level. Also, by sharing my ideas here, that can allow for inspiration and not only another tulpa census in the future, but allow for more accurate conclusions to be drawn and to get more out of the data collected.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Cat_ShadowGriffin

[ChloeBee]

This sounds like a neat idea; it would be interesting to learn about trends in tulpamancy. Unfortunately you might not get a big enough sample size to really be able to have high accuracy in the statistics, but it could be fun anyway.

 

3 hours ago, Cat_ShadowGriffin said:

How do I survey a population of tulpa systems?

 

I would phrase the question "What is the population of your system, including hosts and all active head-mates?" That way people would include active members of their systems only. Although questions about inactive head-mates or merged or dissipated tulpas could be asked in a different question.

 

3 hours ago, Cat_ShadowGriffin said:

How do I conduct an ethical survey, especially considering underaged tulpa systems?

 

Basically refrain from asking about anything sexual. So questions such as "Do you have sexual fantasies about your tulpa" would be out. Though, you could probably ask questions about relationship status among tulpas or between tulpa and host.

 

3 hours ago, Cat_ShadowGriffin said:

How do I interpret and organize the data? Are there statistical approaches I need to consider I don't know yet?

 

My high school statistics class is many years behind me now so I'm afraid I can't shed to much light on this, but as I said you probably won't be getting enough responses to really get into deep statistical analysis anyway. The only thing I can think of is to try and correlate the answers of various questions against each other and see if any trends emerge.

 

3 hours ago, Cat_ShadowGriffin said:

What does the community want to know about tulpamancers and tulpas?

 

I have a few suggestions besides the obvious age of tulpamancers and population of system questions:

• What best describes the form of your tulpa(s)?
• Were any of your tulpas based on characters from media, i.e. books, movies, video games, etc.?
• A Question about the gender and sexual orientation of the host, as well as those of the tulpa(s). I'm always fascinated by this.
• This could be sensitive, but it could be worth it to ask about mental illness diagnosis: DID, Autism, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, etc. I'm very curious which tend to lead people to tulpamancy. As a follow up, you could ask if tulpamancy has helped with the said mental illness and to what degree.
• Have you told anyone in your real life (not online) about your tulpa(s), and how positively/negatively did they react?
• This is only a half-formed thought, but you could probe at a link between pandemic-related isolation and tulpamancy.
• Do you, the host, consider yourself an introvert or extrovert?

Those are some thoughts I have. Hope this is helpful!

[Glaurung26]

We're on board. I don't have much time to write essays on what a tulpa means to me but I certainly like answering questions and contributing. Anything bigger than a couple sentences per question I might have to come back to but I imagine if we're talking statistics you would be looking for simple and straightforward stuff instead of deep dives. I do enjoy those too but time is a factor. 

 

I'm interested in seeing where this goes. 😊

[Yakumo]

I appreciate your effort but you are really going hard mode here.

 

As September13 said one of your main obstacles will be sample size. There were quite interesting tulpa surveys some years ago but let's face it - times have changed and you won't even get close to the number of former participants.

 

But that's not all. You are dealing with the about the worst kind of data imaginable: highly subjective self-assessment from random strangers on the internet leading to mostly nominal data which cannot be objectively measured, is hard to categorize and impossible to verify. Person A's self-rated imposition skills may be on a totally different level than person B's choosing the same ordinal value.

 

And last but not least - you are dealing with humans. I have written about this several times years ago but if you really want to adhere to scientific, ethical (and legal) standards you are pretty much done for as a private layperson outside of academia or a company advised by a legal and ethics board. Keep in mind you are processing and storing complex sets of personal or even medical data of individuals. I am unfamiliar with US legislation involving linked personally identifiable information but the US are notoriously lax here compared to the EU with GDPR which imposes strict rules, limitations and safeguard duties on anyone collecting such data.

 

You may argue you are only collecting anonymous data but this is a gray area.
Some users disclose their identity pretty much openly on the forum, I know several. If such person takes part in your anonymous survey and reveals traits, disabilities or medical conditions they wish to keep private it is quite easy to correlate the survey dataset with information posted in the forum to match them and thus dox this person. It's a small world after all.

 

These are implications you should look into beforehand and quite frankly I wouldn't bother with all the fuzz. Making relatively quick and dirty surveys is fine and good but I do not think this is the optimal subject to train for academic research for reasons above.

 

If you want to train your data processing and statistics skills as private individual I strongly advise to stay away from humans and all living things for the sake of reducing both complexity as well as legal and ethical hurdles. Working with objectively measurable numerical data obtained from inanimate objects or

processes gives you way better feedback and makes your life much easier.

 

I'd only deal with human stuff within education, research or work where you have an organization backing you and a framework of knowledgeable individuals to support and advise you.

 

 

TL;DR
Don't waste your time trying to be perfect here, keep it simple. Your data quality will inevitably be very limited and I doubt there's much to gain from elaborate statistic analyses. But then again hey, I'm just some old pessimist. I'm glad if you prove me wrong but don't tell me I didn't warn you what you’re getting yourself into.

 

[GrayTheCat]

On 3/3/2021 at 6:06 PM, September13 said:

This sounds like a neat idea; it would be interesting to learn about trends in tulpamancy. Unfortunately you might not get a big enough sample size to really be able to have high accuracy in the statistics, but it could be fun anyway.

 

Apparently you can do a normal analysis with 30 people. However, you have to make the assumption the data is normal to begin with, otherwise it's useless.

 

I think the more the merrier, but I wouldn't be surprised if my efforts to cover the tulpa community will have the limit of depending on a smaller sample.

 

On 3/3/2021 at 6:06 PM, September13 said:

I would phrase the question "What is the population of your system, including hosts and all active head-mates?" That way people would include active members of their systems only. Although questions about inactive head-mates or merged or dissipated tulpas could be asked in a different question.

 

I was going for all tulpas systems in general in the sense of how do I find people who identity as tulpamancers and get the survey to them, but I agree that elaboration is needed for this question.

 

For starters, what counts as a headmate? Should a dissipated or integrated tulpa count? Should we count characters, "possible tulpas", and "baby tulpas"? Should this survey be limited to tulpa systems and if so, could there be an option for other plural systems?

 

On 3/3/2021 at 6:06 PM, September13 said:

Basically refrain from asking about anything sexual.

 

I agree that's a good idea. I feel like the question of dating your tulpa is okay, but I think it's okay to leave out anything beyond that.

 

On 3/3/2021 at 6:06 PM, September13 said:

I have a few suggestions besides the obvious age of tulpamancers and population of system questions:

 

When I pick up on this next time, I think it will be helpful to have a question bank. I'll organize it and slowly add more over time.

 

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6 hours ago, Glaurung26 said:

I imagine if we're talking statistics you would be looking for simple and straightforward stuff instead of deep dives. I do enjoy those too but time is a factor. 

 

I'm probably going to throw up some text walls in here, but for the census itself simple and clear questions are ideal. I'm personally not the best and simplifying something down, but if I need to I'll try.

 

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4 hours ago, Yakumo said:

And last but not least - you are dealing with humans. I have written about this several times years ago but if you really want to adhere to scientific, ethical (and legal) standards you are pretty much done for as a private layperson outside of academia or a company advised by a legal and ethics board. Keep in mind you are processing and storing complex sets of personal or even medical data of individuals. I am unfamiliar with US legislation involving linked personally identifiable information but the US are notoriously lax here compared to the EU with GDPR which imposes strict rules, limitations and safeguard duties on anyone collecting such data.

 

I think that's a really good thing to bring up. I don't want to pose ethical issues with my census, I would like to take the time to educate myself on what is and isn't ethically appropriate. Worst case scenario I learn that the whole thing is unethical, but at least I learned something.

 

4 hours ago, Yakumo said:

You may argue you are only collecting anonymous data but this is a gray area.
Some users disclose their identity pretty much openly on the forum, I know several. If such person takes part in your anonymous survey and reveals traits, disabilities or medical conditions they wish to keep private it is quite easy to correlate the survey dataset with information posted in the forum to match them and thus dox this person. It's a small world after all.

 

For this reason, I don't think it would be ethical to ask what mental health conditions someone has without a "prefer not to say" option. This would go for other questions like gender and sexual preference. For age, I don't know if I can ethically conduct a census minors can fill out. I would need to look into this though, it could be that I can post summaries but not exact data points, not at all, or it doesn't matter for x y z reasons. I think it's worthwhile to look over consent laws.

 

4 hours ago, Yakumo said:

But that's not all. You are dealing with the about the worst kind of data imaginable: highly subjective self-assessment from random strangers on the internet leading to mostly nominal data which cannot be objectively measured, is hard to categorize and impossible to verify. Person A's self-rated imposition skills may be on a totally different level than person B's choosing the same ordinal value.

 

I find the process of using a subjective scale from 1-n as a tool to be fascinating and also something that completely boggles my mind. What does the scale mean? How do you define what a "3" means? Why do people even use this tool?

 

My guess here is it's better to define the scale to give some grounding on consistency, but by doing so you loose people giving their natural response and you end up with a response filtered by your perspective.

 

4 hours ago, Yakumo said:

If you want to train your data processing and statistics skills as private individual I strongly advise to stay away from humans and all living things for the sake of reducing both complexity as well as legal and ethical hurdles. Working with objectively measurable numerical data obtained from inanimate objects or

processes gives you way better feedback and makes your life much easier.

 

I'm actually drawn to the complexity rather than pushed away from it. I'm aware I'm incapable of creating a perfect survey, but I would like to put some thought into it so I could make an arguably good one. Anything I create will never be better than a professional effort, but maybe I can get data that gives more than an average survey.

 

I wouldn't mind spending a day just researching this scale and if anyone came up with a better ideas or improvements.

 

4 hours ago, Yakumo said:

Don't waste your time trying to be perfect here, keep it simple. Your data quality will inevitably be very limited and I doubt there's much to gain from elaborate statistic analyses. But then again hey, I'm just some old pessimist. I'm glad if you prove me wrong but don't tell me I didn't warn you what you’re getting yourself into.

 

Even in the end if I do fail, I feel like it's a win just for me to at least entertain the thought. Worst case scenario, someone else will use this thread as an example of what not to do. I'm doing this because it gives me something to be excited about and I'm at least thinking about statistics, which is better than napping.

 

4 hours ago, Yakumo said:

but I do not think this is the optimal subject to train for academic research for reasons above.

 

In general I doubt this will be very applicable to collecting data in a professional setting. This does however grant me the opportunity to learn about some methods professionals use, or at least the outdated tactics if there's weird secrecy I don't know about.

 

Mostly, I look forward to doing research on statistics and learning more on how people actually conduct surveys and censuses in the first place.

[GrayTheCat]

My thought dump for today is about how to collect a sample.

 

In my business stats class, I was taught that there are a variety of ways you can do this. These include

• The Simple Random Sample (SRS)
• The stratified random sample (Which isn't abbreviated because that would confuse people I guess?)
• The cluster random sample
• The systematic random sample

The breakdown for each of these is the following:

• An SRS randomly selects from a population (the total number of something). For example, if I wanted an SRS of a 100 kid classroom, I may pick out 10 kids at random.
• A stratified random sample is taken when a population is sorted into groups and an equal percentage of each group is randomly selected. For example, if I had a bowl of 100 M&M's, I may choose to sort each of the candies by color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown) and then randomly select 5% of the M&M's of each color group.
• A cluster random sample is selecting a number of groups (usually pre-existing) and having everything in those selected groups be a part of the sample data. For example, if I wanted to interview McDonalds staff members in North Carolina, I may select 15 random locations throughout the state and interview every single staff member in each of those 15 places.
• A systematic random sample is selecting every nth part of a population list. For example, if I wanted to know how much coca-cola cans weighed in my coca-cola can factory, I may select every 200th soda can off the assembly line and weigh those.

[More on sampling methods]

 

The previous tulpa censuses are actually none of the above. Instead, it's more likely these were created through voluntary responses. This is better than surveying whoever is around via convenience, but it has the downside of being fairly unreliable or having implicit biases. For instance, a volunteer response tulpa census posted on Tulpa.info may get more responses from members of tulpa.info than from members of r/Tulpas, various other Discord communities, and 4chan.

 

Why am I talking about sampling methods if this is supposed to be a tulpa census? Well, the census part is a lie unless everyone is required to take it. Obviously, I can't force anyone to take the tulpa census, and it might be borderline illegal depending on the context to pressure someone into taking the survey. At best, the tulpa census will only ever be the tulpa sampling.

 

I then wondered if the census is done via voluntary responses. I remember hearing some concerns about people not filling in the census, but after doing some digging, I realized skipping out on the US census is actually illegal. The US Census is most likely a really accurate source simply because the US government mandates its citizens to complete the census and has a government team dedicated to counting people who didn't fill it out themselves. (I also found this link from the US census bureao explaining why they mandate responses)

 

Since nobody has the power (legal or otherwise) to force someone to fill out a survey on tulpas, I wonder if there's a way around this problem.

 

I'm aware that mass lists of tulpamancers do in fact exist, or at least, a mass list of members per community exist. The Tulpa.info forums have a list of members, Discord servers list out how many users they have, etc. Reddit is the only tricky one because they do not have such a thing, but as suggested by the link it is possible to get a list of active users via scraping with a bot. (I also know someone who used a bot to scape Reddit posts for a school project) In theory, it could be possible to randomly select members based on such lists.

 

Granted, this won't be a perfect way to survey the entire tulpa community, but I think it's an approach that could introduce less bias than a volunteer survey. With lists, one could hypothetically draw a sample from each community. That leaves the issue of people who can't or won't respond for whatever reason.

 

I don't know if this is a viable option, but I wonder if I could do a trade off by generating a list of people and generate another list if I can't reach out to that first group. Let's say I move forward with a stratified sample and I want to survey ~5% of the members from each community. I could generate a list of members that involve 5% of each community, then a "plan B" list with the same 5% proportions, and so on. For example, let's say one data point should be a member from Tulpa.info and Ranger is on the A list. If Ranger was inaccessible for whatever reason or I couldn't reach out to him to fill out the census, I move onto the next member Evergreen, who's on the B list. Evergreen is Ranger's headmate, so it doesn't make sense for him to be available if Ranger isn't to begin with. Therefore, I then move onto the C list and keep going until I run out of lists.

 

I think this approach has a strength, but it has a lot of weaknesses. The strength is I don't have to survey everyone and I can still get data that's sort of proportional to the broader tulpa community. I can still achieve 5% of the accessible community. However, if one member is a member of multiple communities... then what? Do they belong in a different group entirely or do they count as both? The other weakness is the more lists I have, the more limited the sample size will be. If I do 5%, at most I can only have 20 lists. The other weakness is the more lists I end up using during the search, the more convenient the data becomes. If on average I end up using the 7th list of 10 lists, that data is probably more convenient than using the 3rd list on average because I'm weeding out more people due to inaccessibility. There's also the hidden odds of how shuffled the lists are, if each data point of 10 lists has a 1/10 chance of being accessible, then by default I will end up selecting a lot of convenient data (by process of elimination, I will only ever pick the convenient tulpa system a good chunk of the time).

 

There's also the question if there is any gain to using an approach like the one above. Is it less biased than a volunteer survey? Is it worth it to move forward with such an approach? Has anyone ever used an approach like this before?

 

I may or may not look into these questions more, but I think that's enough for now.

[GrayTheCat]

Welp, that first goal fell short.

 

I lost interest in doing a census this year when I needed a break from doing tulpa community stuff, another census project was attempted but fell apart, and then we had a lot less free time in general. While I don't want to stop what I'm doing right now to make a census, I may post here occasionally just to hoard resources and links if I ever change my mind.

 

I'm taking intro to engineering stats, which despite kicking my ass I still enjoy. I'm not sure how much I can apply yet, and I doubt I'll cover many topics from this class, but if anything I have developed some better research skills and I feel more motivated to learn this content on my own.

 

I found this link this morning, it's a web page that recommends various sampling techniques. A good amount of it I never heard of before, it's probably a good place to start: https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/research/survey-analysis-types/

 

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The big things on my mind lately are set theory (the P(A) U P(B) crap) and some distributions.

 

Maybe Baye's theorem could be helpful? I was accidentally studying that instead of Baye's rule (which might be different? Idk). I'm not sure what context would be applicable, I don't know what displaced belief I can test for? You can't quantify how good tulpa guides are solely based on subjective opinion and really measure that? I could potentially measure how likely a tulpa will turn out given the assumptions provided by personality forcing? I may need prior evidence though, like a big 5 survey to act as a frame of reference?

 

Tangent: Is there any value in combining the big 5 with the Myer's Brigg test? I know the Myer's Brigg test is basically bullshit, but I don't think the Big 5 isn't much better. I don't think there is, I was wondering if we could track more change or something. Maybe instead it would be better to give people the hex something test (Big 5 + another trait I forgot about)

 

Binomial distributions have been on my mind. I wonder if I could use it to help people better guage how good a guide is... actually no, I don't think forums nor Reddit offer the actual amount of reviews, and Reddit straight up fudges the vote counter I think as a defense against vote raids? All that rambling on Discord down the drain....

 

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One of the things I was wondering about was if it would be interesting to measure system population changes over time. Our system has changed a lot over time and I assumed we were an outlier compared to other systems. After seeing several of the systems we know or knew change over time, I realized that tulpa systems may not be as stable as I initially thought when it comes to system size.

 

Is it true a lot of tulpas are red heads? Hair color would be hard to apply for non-human tulpas, but I could ask for maybe fur color. Beyond that, maybe what the primary colors of the tulpa's form are.

 

How many people practice narration? It can't be that rare, right?

 

Merge variety? I feel like there's a lot more variety in merge experiences and there's not a whole lot of conversation about it. I'm not really sure how to survey for that though.

 

I'm going to go to bed, I think I'm done insomnia posting. Good night maybe.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Cat_ShadowGriffin

[TurboSimmie]

Those personality tests straddle the line of being pseudoscience but they can still have some value. All the statistical stuff is a bit over my head, but it's often interesting to see the results!

 

8 hours ago, Cat_ShadowGriffin said:

Is it true a lot of tulpas are red heads? Hair color would be hard to apply for non-human tulpas, but I could ask for maybe fur color. Beyond that, maybe what the primary colors of the tulpa's form are.

 

I'm a redhead and I brought this up a couple months ago in another topic, I forget where. It's something I noticed too, but I had mixed responses when asking whether people thought there were a lot of redhead tulpas out there. Maybe I just notice other redheads because I'm one myself?

 

8 hours ago, Cat_ShadowGriffin said:

How many people practice narration? It can't be that rare, right?

 

I am fully vocal and have been for some time. Phil still narrates to me all the time. Is that weird? I don't think it is. Here are some reasons he does it:

 

1. It makes him feel less alone. 

2. It gives me attention I otherwise wouldn't get from Phil when he's occupied with something

3. I'm still learning new things about Phil, his life, and the greater world around me by listening to him.

4. I can jump in with encouragement or give my opinion if I want

5. Phil is naturally a bit of a monologer and would do it whether I was here or not. 😄 At least this way his stream of consciousness has an audience!

[Yakumo]

I hate to be a party pooper again but after giving it some thought I still don't see any test which would get you quantifiable data of sufficient sample size to practice applying statistics in a meaningful way...

 

I must say I find the Big5 / MBTI tests at least entertaining. Something I'd like to have is a sort of community map of both hosts and tulpas in this regard to see where you stand compared to others. Even if its borderline bullshit it does hold true for core personality traits - and it's fun. Dunno if others would agree to publish their results in a map but that would at least be some sort of community project that brings us together.

 

Or basically any sort of 2D / 3D map of traits of community members, sort tuppers by size, form, perceived age, whatever. Hard mode - collect as many traits from tuppers and hosts as possible and do a cluster analysis to see if they group together or are randomly distributed.