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Subjectivity correction as an overlooked aspect in tulpamancy discussions


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I had this idea circling in my mind regarding the way tulpamancy experiences are being discussed that I wasn't sure how to express. So generally, the things that we experience can be divided into either events that are certain or those that take a specific place on a spectre. A certain event is something that can be easily put into words, like the lack or presence of something (for example lights on/lights off), but there are also things that can't be, due to their nature, conveniently described with words. As an example, take a person who's being asked what the temperature in the room is like. They can say that it was too warm or that it was too cold, which is something most people will usually agree on. But they can also use the expression that the temperature was "pretty average" or "ok", and here's the problem that comes with it. The temperature that the person in question considers to be "ok" or "average" can be very subjective. And I don't mean the subjectivity of an experience, I mean the subjectivity of concept definition.

There are words that we use that we don't give much thought, because we tend to assume that their definition is universal. We obviously don't clarify every time wheter our understanding of concepts like "tall" or "wide" match that of a person we talk to. It would simply be too inconvenient, so we instead run with the assumption that our understanding of the concept is the same, deeming it easier to just clarify it should a misunderstanding arise. But I think that this aspect is often being overlooked when people discuss tulpamancy experiences. What I'm getting on here is that possibly a significant portion of doubts that people get to deal with could be attributed to these discrepancies in concepts understanding.

Here's an example of what I mean. Imagine a person who's trying to help their headmate achieve vocality. They read a guide or maybe a post that describes vocality as essentially a way of communication where one hears their headmate. They associate those words with their understanding of what hearing is and start practicing. They spend a month, two months, three months consistently practicing, and they do achieve certain results, but they never quite get there. They assume that they're doing something wrong or that something wrong is with their headmate. They start doubting. But in fact, they did everything right and had gotten exactly where they should've, it's just that the current way they hear their headmate ended up not matching their expectation of what hearing would work like. It happened both because the guide/post they read didn't describe what hearing a headmate is like, and because they didn't give much thought to where exactly their definition of hearing is on the scale from complete lack of any thoughts and a vivid hallucination that feels completely alien as if it was coming from another person outside their mind.

From cases like these come questions like "How well can you X" or "What does X feel like". But that's not as much of an issue if they do receive a good answer to their question. The problem here is in that not everyone will ask those questions, and even if they do the answer may introduce even more confusion. Someone might say "I can hear them clearly". Well, what does "clearly" imply in this sentence exactly? Is it supposed to feel slightly muffled, but still be easy enough to make out words? Is it meant to feel like it's coming from inside or from outside? And if neither of these details match does that mean the person is not able to hear their headmate clearly? What if they already achieved the best possible quality, but expect it to be better and think that it's not in fact clear. Because of these discrepancies, someone (person A) may claim they do hear their headmates clearly, because they think that it doesn't get much clearer that that. At the same time, another person (person B) who in fact had gone a lot further than person A may claim that they can't hear their headmates very well, because in their understanding it should be even clearer. This way you end up with a false comparison when person A seems to have better developed skills thatn person B, while in fact it's the complete opposite.

And it gets the more dangerous the more complex the concept that's being discussed is. There aren't many words that can describe how sentient and independent someone is. Headmates are a relatively novel concept in terms of how we think of them nowadays, and therefore the languages we speak don't really have words that describe how we experience the sentience and independence of someone inside. When we discuss these concepts and how far we've gotten in developing such skills we have to make do with what our language offers. How red is that red exactly? Uh... MiIdly red? Slightly more saturated than regular red? Oh, no, it's not red, it's crimson. Except we don't have crimson, cherry, ruby, scarlet, garnet, and rose words equivalents for describing the concepts of sentience and independence. I think it's a very important thing to keep in mind when judging own progress.

What do y'all think of this?

Placid.

Tulpas: Ireen (she/her), born 8th of May 2018.

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This is a problem for sure, language is incredibly limited when it comes to describing internal processes and miscommunication is bound to be a problem unless the terms used are defined really well.
One thing I've also noticed is that the ability to distinguish the quality of your internal experiences also evolves as your skill progresses. For instance, I used to think I was really good at visualization before I had any skill in it. And the more I learned the more I realize that I was barely seeing anything back then. I believe this is the case for many people as well. Where some sort of dunning Kruger effect happens simply because there isn't any way to compare your experience with someone else's.
It probably would be a good idea to define what the experience should be like, or try to narrow down the "default tulpa experience" so to say, in order to avoid mistakes in communication resulting in people thinking they are unable to make a tulpa simply because they misunderstood what the experience is supposed to be like.

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  • 3 months later...

Understanding things in ways they weren't intended has burned me a lot. I realize so many things can be understood in radically different ways and it can be hard to know what is right even when people try to spell it out. I think something should be done for it but I am not sure how to fix that. I guess being more aware of it is a start.

Creation for creation's sake.

 

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Resident Dojikko

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This is why I'm not a big fan of lying to children or people in general. In "protecting" them, you can lead them down the wrong path due to a critical assumption or misunderstanding that never came up in conversation and never corrected when they grew up. Maybe not the more gritty upsetting details but try to explain or introduce complex concepts as they grow up. Children want to learn more about the world and their place in it. Feeding them feelgood bs will just create misinformation that needs to be corrected later. Train better, earlier. But that can be applied to introduction to any discipline, like Tulpamancy. 

 

Contextual or subjective accuracy is important. Although due to the baggage the word "subjectivity" has built up around it, "relative" might be a friendlier term. Unless there is a way to measure a detail, quality, occurrence, etc using an external shared device/method/tool, it might be best to assume that the sliders on a scale of two individuals are set to differing positions until overlap is proven. 

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