Is hosting a tulpa detrimental to overall cognitive intelligence?

[xprincess]

Neuroplasticity allows for this, essentially rearranging segments of the brain to build tulpas. The catch is the neuron count isn't unlimited. Dedicate more resources to the tulpa, and the rest of you has fewer left to draw from.

While the model implies that brand new neural webs aren't fully recreated-mostly reusing like memory-they still require constructing fresh networks. This process takes neurons directly from yourself, meaning they aren't infinite resources to be added without cost.

Can the headaches I get during forcing be from the actual loss of neurons or cognition degrading?

Did anyone notice changed in behavior externally? (Like drops in IQ score, reaction time, etc?) (You can't really notice yourself getting worse from the inside because creating the tulpa spans weeks to months, so changes in smarts can only really be spotted objectively via test)

[The Candlelight Society]

Does memorizing the entire Pokédex cause cognitive decline? No, the answer is no. To put it simply, you could spend the next 100 years using meditative practices to try and hit your mental "limit" and not get anywhere. There are trillions of neural connections in the human mind. You will send yourself into psychosis far before you have any singular physical cause for cognitive decline, and that's if you were trying to mentally self harm in such a way. 

 

To go further, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of neurology and neuroplasticity. Neurons can be used for multiple functions and it's the connections between them which give rise to new information, memory, and behaviors. These connections are so many that the number begins to become arbitrary for the layman. These connections can also grow and shrink, connect and disconnect, and the neurons themselves will be just fine. On top of all of this, tulpas are not purely neurological. Nobody fully understands the development of a tulpa and how it influences the brain but it's safe to assume tulpas and tulpamancy arises from both partly neurological alterations (neuroplasticity) but also just using basic psychological phenomena in novel ways to manipulate self and personhood from one to two or more. The plasticity aspect will come less from their agency or awareness and more from them building up their own opinions memories and behaviors over time, which you're already doing for yourself and which the brain is more than capable of providing no matter how many identities it's doing it for. 

[fennecfoxx]

You can’t lose neurons by engaging in mentally intensive activities. Anything that takes particular mental effort will forge and reinforce neural connections, making the brain potentially stronger, not weaker.

 

The brain does have finite resources, but it isn’t like creating a tulpa permanently reallocates a portion of those resources to them. Our understanding within our system is that we have one mind, and this mind has multiple identities/personalities plus the subconscious/unconscious stuff. As far as conscious mental activity goes, it can be attributed to “me” (tulpas not present), “not me” (tulpa fronting), or split between us (tulpa(s) present). Whatever the case is, there’s no change in overall cognitive ability, just in how much activity is perceived as “me” versus “not me” (which is fluid, and we consider it an illusion).

[xprincess]

13 hours ago, The Candlelight Society said:

Neurons can be used for multiple functions and it's the connections between them which give rise to new information, memory, and behaviors

Thanks so much for such a detailed reply! Yeah, I'm not really that well-versed in neuroscience though

13 hours ago, The Candlelight Society said:

basic psychological phenomena

Wait, isn't psychology just a high-level abstraction of neuroscience? Basically all psychological actions arise from individual neuron behavior, meaning the psychology ends up describing the collective behavior and what these groups do when there are very large numbers of neurons working together

[bunnymustdie]

4 hours ago, xprincess said:

Wait, isn't psychology just a high-level abstraction of neuroscience?

 

Not as far as I know.

 

4 hours ago, xprincess said:

Basically all psychological actions arise from individual neuron behavior, meaning the psychology ends up describing the collective behavior and what these groups do when there are very large numbers of neurons working together

 

There's no definitive proof of that, despite some observed correlations between the two. It complicates things further that there are people who would like to push for that to further their own pet beliefs.

 

I don't think psychology is a unified field where you can just say "in psychology..." the same way religion is not a unified field - there are different schools of psychology and different religions with very different beliefs. I've been reading Jungian psychology recently and it would likely help with your line of inquiry. I find reading the actual source material a lot more helpful than reading the psychology text books I read back in school, which were watered down and had biases of the editors themselves.

Edited April 19 by bunnymustdie