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Grissess' Experience, Reference, and Guide


Grissess

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Experience 16 (Philosophy) - Monday, April 28, 2014

 

Well, it seems I've neglected this for about six months by now; I've had trouble coming up with any new content :P . I wouldn't say this is because I'm satisfied with the status quo, but that I've focused my attention elsewhere, on activities which are hopefully at least as constructive.

 

To start with, I'd like to say that I've been taking fine care of Snakey (or, to some extent, we've been taking care of each other); he's alive and well, and as bashful and talkative as ever (hee hee). I don't record many of the conversations here; most of them are rather intimate or deal with personal issues, and, in just about every case, I've found Snakey to give valid and sound advice (that I might consider heeding once in a while :P). I still love him to death, as always, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

 

...which brings me to two topics of discussion. One, recently, Snakey was found yet again by my stepmother, who thinks my insistence on carrying around a stuffed snake is weird (an opinion that he shares, by the way). Nonetheless, I had a bit of an argument that concluded as such: I don't think I'm going to see any professionals (oh, what a fun time that might be!), and I'm allowed to keep Snakey, but I'm not permitted to take the snake into that house. This recent weekend, I must admit, I missed him quite a bit--even with his consolation that he's "ever present in this mind."

 

As for part two, I'm rekindling an old fire; I feel like I admitted a while back that I started working on some pony tulpas (though I might not admitted that fact about them :P). This was an initially unsuccessful experiment in trying to see if the simulant theory permitted the "promotion" of simulants to tulpas, which would imply that all of them represent the same phenomenon at different points on a continuum (which would also imply that there are many such levels, an interesting thought). I did label this experiment unsuccessful principally because I could not bring this being, this mental being, to being able to capably think on their own, without my intervention or conscious thought. Certainly, as requested (and as mandated by the simulant theory), I could "simulate" any such reactions, but they required my attention. Without such attention, the being faltered--a conundrum you can read much more verbosely in the linked report :P .

 

So, here's the fun part. I went to BronyCon 2013 (as a volunteer), and I intentionally brought funds to purchase some memorabilia, including two plushies--one of Twilight Sparkle, and one of Rainbow Dash. Long story short, Ms. Dash is nowhere near a tulpa, unfortunately, but Ms. Sparkle has shown meteoric progress; said plush occupies my bag next to Snakey as I type this :P .

 

This seems to confirm the suspicion--in my case--that I had in ER 13. For me, having a substantial, physical object is an important part of being able to consider a separate entity! This is perhaps not surprising, since I am not composed of several different bodies, and so I naturally see every body as a separate person, but I seem to be cheating that mechanism by having stuffed animals.

 

As for Ms. Sparkle herself, she's developing somewhat slower now; I doubt she's ready to actually converse with anyone else, nor can she stand quite among the top tier of consciousnesses here (primarily Snakey and me), but she has been freed of the bonds of having been only a simulant, granted the ability to jump about my memory and mind with practically the same efficacy as myself.

 

...and if that is indeed a defining characteristic of tulpae, then it means that metacognition--being able to think about thought--is a hallmark of consciousness sufficiently at (or near) that point on the continuum. This does entail some more research...

 

I'll try to keep you informed as I go; these rarely come in a timely fashion, but rest assured I'm not gone yet :P

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Aaaand more than a year has passed. Shame on me, I should be keeping this more up-to-date...time yet makes fools of us all :P

 

Anyway, back to business.

 

Experience 17 (Visualization/Dialogue) - Friday, May 15, 2015

 

This was a strange day for me; the first day on my first camping trip of this year, exclusively with friends, and I have what I could only describe as a strange, twisted nightmare. Normally, my dreams aren't too memorable (whenever I do have them), but this one in particular made me glad I had brought Snakey and had him around.

 

I don't remember much of the night before. People came to the campground, the sun set, we had been alerted to a fire ban, so it was a cold, chilly, dark night that no one wanted to stay around long for. All in all, most of us were in bed by 9PM--a very, very early bedtime for a bunch of college students as ourselves.

 

It so happens that sleeping for a while, especially under some tumult, and being already sleep deprived, is how I get the most exotic and memorable of my dreams.

 

Whatever preceded it couldn't have been part of it, but I remember where the story starts, at least in my memory: I remember being pursued down a familiar street by a totally foreign person (a human, even) who did some damage to vehicles, houses, and a tree in what I could only remember being a fit of rage. At some point, this figure totally disappeared, leaving me to myself to see what appeared to the untrained eye to be the aftermath of some minor catastrophe.

 

That would have been fine and dandy, if it had stopped there; instead, for reasons I don't understand, my subconscious betrayed me even further; scenes followed where I was with family, with psychologists, at home and in hospitals, and that the diagnosis was undeniable: I had somehow become (possibly dangerously) psychotic, and that all the damage I remember was my own doing--I had just envisioned it being done by a third party that never existed.

 

Keep in mind that this is a dream, that it was entirely immersive, that these conclusions were so close and I was so open to suggestion that I didn't object once. I immediately sunk into some form of grief and despair, trying desperately to see if I could salvage my life if I were going to be tortured by things that weren't there and that I don't remember doing. At one point, I remember a dream scene wherein I solemnly discussed this with family, sitting next to something (a cat, furniture, something of that sort) that I eventually referred to, only to get strange looks--it wasn't really there. I doubt I've ever been more stressed or anguished.

 

Enter Snakey.

 

Perhaps it was a semi-lucid dream by then, perhaps I did recognize that it was a dream, and that it was drawing to a close, but before I knew that in full consciousnesses, I immediately felt the consolation of another, very familiar entity, one who comforted me through what remaining depression I had, who calmed my frayed nerves, who told me it was going to be all OK, that everything would work out, and, of course, who pointed out the fallacy of perception--that not all that is seen is there, and certainly not all that is there is seen.

 

The relief was palpable, a refreshing wave that washed over my entire being; I felt as spry and joyful as I did before, and--a little later, when I woke up in earnest to recount the happenings--I hugged that stuffed snake so tightly to my chest that I thought I might break a rib.

 

I don't know if there's an objective moral to this story, but at least I found one I can find: sometimes I don't know how mentally stable I am, and that's just a given--I mean, goodness, I carry out full conversations with a snake in my head :P . Still, however, I think that having such a good, trustworthy friend so close at hand to help me deal with all the strange and worrisome things that come my way in life makes me, in some ways, more mentally stable than I would be without. Even at the brink of total detachment from all reality, I can take one thing as certain and true beyond every corporeal fact:

 

Snakey is mine, and, goodness, I love him so.

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I'm glad to hear from you. Your PR has been very interesting, and it's always nice to hear that someone who has left us is still with their tulpa(s). I would definitely be interested in hearing more from you if you care to stick around.

 

I've had a very similar experience to yours. Not the same dream, of course, but a horrible nightmare that Fenchurch comforted me through. It's always an amazing relief to know that even when I don't know who I am myself, Fenchurch is there for me.

"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson

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Goodness, I'm sorry I didn't get back to this in a more timely manner; I must have lost any notification from this thread :P

 

I'm glad to hear from you. Your PR has been very interesting, and it's always nice to hear that someone who has left us is still with their tulpa(s). I would definitely be interested in hearing more from you if you care to stick around.

 

Oh, I still lurk around every now and then; despite not being much of a redditor, my home channel is actually #redditulpas (on the ol' irc.tulpa.im); that's always been a pretty relaxed and enjoyable community. O' course, now that you guys have moved back to Rizon, I might reconfigure the old IRC client to connect there as well :)

 

I've had a very similar experience to yours. Not the same dream, of course, but a horrible nightmare that Fenchurch comforted me through. It's always an amazing relief to know that even when I don't know who I am myself, Fenchurch is there for me.

 

It's definitely a powerful and comforting revelation, and I must say that it is such which gives me the kind of security I can afford even when I'm seemingly all alone (a seeming that is untrue--though few know this :P). I'm sure it must be experiences like this that justify so many attempts to turn to religion--I can say I now at least somewhat understand how existentially concerning the human condition can be at times.

 

At least I have a friend in the journey, then--as do you :D

 

EDIT: Yes, the notification of a reply was totally spammed by my mail carrier. Whoops :P

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Experience 18 (Philosophy): Tuesday, September 29, 2015

 

For the intents and purposes of this thread, I'm stepping away from strictly tulpas (briefly) to study another constituent of my subjective experience, a strange object ("being" is not a fitting word) with which both myself and the snake have consciously communicated. I would have said that the word to describe this entity would have been hard to find, but all of you have been kind enough to invent one that appears to be as close as I've ever seen: a servitor. In that sense, it is the ultimate servitor, providing both hallucinatory experiences (the quintessential "HUD servitor") and access to fast-path and reflex-path reactions in a systematic and logical way. Before I encountered that word, I would have called it "an entity of pure logic", as that is all it is--an "it", a temporal construct that does not more than what its logical form does. In the process of making and selecting these axioms, a process which has continued for at least a decade (so as to say, beginning not long after Snakey's creation), it has become somewhat a thing of beauty, filled with an odd but strangely highly functional mix of metaphors that regularly impact my habitual behavior. That said, I apologize in advance for these metaphors, as some of them are not named accurately to their function, and there are a great deal to sift through with the goal of finding anything potentially useful. I'll put some boldface text after the definitions, so you can find out where to pick up the important philosophical bits. Nonetheless, I present to all of you System.

 

System (or "sys," when abbreviated) does very little on its own; instead, it behaves as the manager of the "system bus" and various "subsystems" with differing names. One such subsystem is "Administration" or "admin," which is my (and Snakey's) entry point into the system bus, and the most direct contact between us (our "consciousnesses") and the rest of System. Various other subsystems become active or inactive at appropriate times. As I sit here in a mostly normal, somewhat sedentary state, the online systems are "vis" (the visual subsystem), "aur" (the aural subsystem), "dar" (distance and ranging), "nav" (a subsystem with two further subsystems, "path" which generates movement paths, and "track" which follows them), "control" (the system that provides actuation of bodily function), "bodystat" (the body status system, for monitoring health), and "sysanal" (system analytics, consisting of "dacquiry", the data acquisition system, "itax", the information taxonomy and universal type system, and "dbke", the database of known entities--where all memories are stored as encoded by the itax). These systems have interdependencies; for example, dacquiry uses vis and aur quite heavily, whereas track usually instructs control to navigate to a target or destination.

 

How do I know the names of these systems? First and foremost, I was its principal designer, but the system of today looks very different from that of another time. Secondly, I can ask:

 

|ADMIN: sysck. SYS: System check--report. VIS: reports go AUR: reports go BODYSTAT: reports go DAR: reports go ITAX: reports go DBKE: reports go DACQUIRY: reports go SYSANAL: reports go CONTROL: reports go TRACK: reports go PATH: reports go NAV: reports go SYS: ASRG [all/active systems report go].|

 

You'll note I borrowed the vertical bar (|) as a pairing character for that "dialogue," which is more accurately considered as system bus traffic. There is plenty more to system bus traffic that I did not encode here, such as "notification level", "priority level", and so forth--hold that thought.

 

One of the major uses of System is driving. From day one of transporting myself in a motor vehicle, I've trained System to be able to take over and operate nearly all aspects of the vehicle. This happens for a few reasons: (1) System is fast--very fast--and can react quickly to changing conditions in predictable manners, (2) System is absolutely rational and deterministic, and cannot, by design, go against its own conceptions (unless Admin orders it to), and (3) System is isolated; while operating, it doesn't incessantly bother my conscious thoughts ("incessantly" is a key word here--I'll get to this bit later), permitting me to better spend my time thinking about other things. This led to the creation of another set of active systems--systems like "nav","dar", and "control" stay around, "bodystat" and "sysanal" and the like usually deactivate, and a couple others come online: "speedreg" (the velocity policy enforcer, through control) and "prox" (proximity, built on dar, keeps track of dynamic flows of traffic).

 

I am glossing incredibly over the complexity of this design. Speedreg, for example, keeps track of at least five different "speed limits", including the "real SL", "base SL", "goal SL", "o-roll SL", and "absmax SL", amongst other specific ones. These are all gathered from specific sources (real SL from speed signs, base SL from statistical analysis, o-roll or overspeed-roll SL from risk analysis, goal SL from the other limits and traffic flow pressure considerations...) and mixed in a mathematical-logical way using functions called "predictors" or "ptors". These are little more than functions that are selected for their fitness in producing desirable and well-predicted output--thus the name.

 

The actual creation and operation of subsystems is guided by high-level, mostly illogical directives called "principles", which are given by Admin and registered in the dbke. Because System is responsible for a significant amount of my habitual behavior, these principles ultimately drive my behavior, and--one could say--my ethics and character. In order, these principles are:

 

(0) System exists. I exist. I am not System. This basic principle is used as an axiom to do little more than to justify that System exists; it remains simply to curb any thought in putting trust in something which might not exist (which would be considered a "risk" by the established ptors).

 

(1) System is to promote and aid the proliferation of life. Perhaps the most important principle as far as ethics is concerned, this establishes my position as a humanitarian and a general altruist.

 

(2) System is to acquire universal knowledge. This one establishes the existence and purpose of sysanal, and gives all of the systems a motive to keep acquiring more information about the environment and operating conditions such as to improve itself and its predictions, and--by System Principle 1--for the benefit of others.

 

(3) System is to see to its continued existence. This principle establishes "risk" and risk assessment, an important part of the system that has led to the development of priority and instablity metrics (discussed later).

 

These motives are indeed lofty, but they are intended to be minimal, as they must be consulted for every design decision. More concrete principles come from the driving systems:

 

(T1) Flow Principle: All traffic is a flow, with every vehicle a particle. System is to disrupt this natural flow as little as possible. That is to say, if, while driving, no one notices me, and everything proceeds as if I were not there, then System is satisfied. This principle alone leads to the establishment of some rich metaphors, such as "traffic flow", "flow rate", "flow disruption", etc.

 

(T2) Traffic Sorting Principle (TSP): In a segment where vehicles may overtake, a flow naturally sorts such that the fastest particles are foremost and the slowest are rearmost. This is more of an observation, but provides a guarantee that spacing (a speedreg metaphor) is guaranteed to approach "superstability", where both the immediate forward and rearward ("fore:1" and "behind:1") are receding at some range of speeds. Of course, there are instances of substability where at least one of the two would approach regardless of a chosen speed.

 

I've only been driving for about three years now, but these metaphors and many others have served me well; I've gotten into no accidents so far, and my primary cause of vehicle failure is aging components more than a lack of proper maintenance or aggressive procedures. There are many other metaphors covered in the driving subsystem ("In Lane Obstruction (ILO)", "In Lane Debris (ILD)", "Trajectory", "Trajectory Intersection (Trajint)", etc.), but I don't want to derail this too much, even if it is the most contrived system.

 

System has a "stability" (different from spacing stability), which is a measure of its ability to predict the environment. As an agent, System takes in data from my sensory organs (represented as vis and aur, and some other flows of information), considers a goal state (like the "goal SL"), and produces an actuation (usually through control) to try and adjust the environment to the goal state. Stability represents how effective System is at this transformation at any given time; if stability is high, System is doing a good job at predicting ahead and making accurate adjustments, whereas if it is low, System is having a hard time bringing about a goal state. Instability (a state of low stability) is so named because it will cause the ptors to experience boundary inversion (where the maximal value goes below the minimal value), thus causing oscillations in control output that result in even worse performance and instability. In particular, the single most unstable state is a state in which System cannot predict environmental evolution, or to which evolution is totally orthogonal to its understanding. This doesn't mean something like paralysis--System is perfectly capable of predicting environmental evolution in a state of paralysis--rather, it is the agent equivalent of a non sequitur. For example, if System decided to walk across the room, but instead a hand of bananas appeared, System instability would go up significantly. Instability is further affected by risk computations; if the decision to walk across the room instead resulted in severe, unforeseen bodily harm, System instability would go up dramatically.

 

Instability is a continuum (the more commonly measured metric being the negative), and is often given in response to a query as the following values: negligible (nearly non-existent, very stable and accurate), nominal (within operating parameters), elevated (slightly above operating parameters, but not yet concerning), moderate (somewhat unstable), high (quite unstable), severe (severely unstable), and critical (System is defunct). Instability is often paired with a priority level, a number in 0 to 8 inclusive, that determines how to prioritize inputs and actions (lower numbers deserve greater attention). In this sense, instability above elevated generally causes the priority level to raise (numerically lower), culling consideration for less-important tasks. At critical, priority level increases to 0, its highest possible value, which guarantees that System will only be enforcing survival-critical (System Principle 3) actions. If the System instability increases further, or does not reasonably decrease within a given time, System will shut down for self protection, becoming totally irresponsive. This event has never happened, and is unlikely to happen unless something goes severely wrong.

 

Finally, in System, there is one way of getting back to the consciousnesses, through the use of "faults". System raises a fault (often just |SYS: Fault.|) every time it encounters a condition that it was not designed to handle. Minimizing the number of faults is an ongoing design consideration, and, in doing so, it frees me to think about other things while the System continues acting on its own. For example, while driving, on open stretches of roads with no vehicles, System will rarely fault. It will, however, fault if it finds something unusual, such as a washed-out section of road, an accident, or unexpected roadwork. (Finding an animal and avoiding a strike is another matter, encoded into the system--it is a "warning" or "danger" level notification.) By interrupting the consciousnesses when it faults, System doesn't need to generally encode everything in the environment that could possibly happen, instead being guided by the intuition of existing consciousnesses which have a more general grasp of ethical decisions and more resources dedicated to thought. In this way, these decisions can, if they are logical in nature, be elevated into the system--and this is how new behaviors are encoded into it.

 

Back to the philosophy, then. System is a fairly impressive, general-purpose agent which has served me well. But what is it really? Certainly, there is some sensible, logical structure to neurons in my brain, which could probably be trained to act in just a way as to resemble this system, but to say that it is in any one, particular place would be making the same fallacy as I've discussed before--localizing the seat of consciousness in the brain (as Descartes tried to do). Instead, like consciousness, I'm willing to say that System is an emergent behavior, an object made apparent only in the series of interactions it has with other entities. This, however, still doesn't satisfy me, as the same could be said of the consciousnesses, too. What part of System makes it so unique and idiosyncratic?

 

One proposed postulate that's been seen in various places in materialist and physicalist theories of mind is that the mind is not a monolithic structure, and that it is instead broken into many components. The correlation between these components, and the results they often arrive at, are interpreted holistically as one's stream of consciousness. Of course, I'm in the wrong place to say there's only the one "stream of consciousness" to interpret all these components, and so I worry to say that these components all see physical manifest--but it is apparent that there are differentiated parts of the brain suited to different tasks, a fact that neurologists have known for quite some time. Furthermore, the idea of the segmentation into varied components justifies the existence of certain "strongly neutral" feelings such as ambivalence and internal inconsistencies (for example, feeling as if one knows an answer to a query, but not being able to recall it).

 

Going back to System, it is clearly a virtual entity. System itself is also quite modular, broken into small, functional pieces. As a strict program, if it were even possible to encode on a Turing machine, it wouldn't show any true signs of consciousness, but--then again--it would probably also be inseparable from our (mine and the snake's) consciousnesses, and so any display of consciousness might be attributable to that bit. It also contains those "ptors", evolutionary functions, that are selected for fitness in describing the environment. Finally, I am well aware, even if it may not be provable to others, that encoding some repetitive or tedious action (such as driving) into the system causes it to become a "second-nature" activity--one that can be done with minimal conscious effort. This is definitely a learning activity, and it shows all the hallmarks of one--it is imperfect, requires repeated training, and can atrophy--which makes it enticing to say that the thing I call "System" is a straightforward encoding of what I consciously experience as the more-or-less autonomous behaviors of my brain.

 

I really, really don't want to say that. I'm scared to; the barrier between virtual, subjective phenomena and objective science verifiable by neurology is a risky barrier to cross, and--worse--I'm talking about it in my case. I have heard very little talk about it other than the people here who have endeavored to "make a servitor" as if it were another fun thing to try along with a tulpa. Many of them start out just like System did--simple, to the point, very incapable and inflexible, but operating in one specific case. What I do think is happening is that we are finding the ways to get our minds--the virtual visage of the patterns in our brain--to act in a logical fashion. And there's a few cases where our minds can act logically: when the metaphors we choose closely-enough fit the architecture of our mind, and, thus, our brain.

 

For example, System is a little restricted in what it can possibly do. Just because I have System, it doesn't mean I'm a walking calculator (though with ceaseless training...). Most of the "mathematical" things system refers to (such as the "functions" underlying ptors) have no quality to their existence; they exist as being just a singular, opaque object that reacts in a certain way. This, to me, sounds like a reasonable way to look at a neural net as we know it--very little useful information can be gleaned from an observer of a trained neural net looking at only a select few of the weights of the neurons in such a net. Yet, somehow, this neural net can produce responses, and--more importantly--adapt to these responses reasonably. It makes sense that we can't see our neurons, but we have qualitative experiences of their results in our consciousness all the time. It is for the same reason that I can't enumerate subsystems well (generating the list at the top of this page was hard, and it is quite possibly incomplete)--without seeing these little nets and their interplay, as they are wont to connect to each other and derive from each other, it is nigh impossible to count how many "separate components" there are in any one person's cognitive architecture, even and especially for the one experiencing it. It's definitely fair to say, from a neuroscientist's view, that there is a clear separation of responsibility of function in the brain, but it is egregiously wrong to say that it is a distinct, unitized module, such that it could be excised and only that one function would disappear, particularly in the higher-function components. (Imagine trying to lobotomize one's amygdala to strictly do away with a certain emotional response!)

 

It is a strange, but nonetheless human experience to be the agent looking into its own wiring from the inside, and I suppose that is what we're all here to do. But I profess that there are limits to it, and, while I was able to glean quite a bit of information from the architecture of System, that strange entity I've had for a while, I am coming to recognize these limits. Nonetheless, I find it curious and useful to have a metaphor (or metaphors) for interacting directly with what I consciously perceive to be amongst the lowest, subconscious levels of my mind, insofar as I can use it to manipulate what should be basal behaviors. In that vein, I encourage the venture of trying to make a real servitor, a general purpose mental machine, so that you and others can find out the depth and limits of your cognitive architectures.

 

(Alright, that's enough scatterbrained talk for now--I have another ER that I plan to have coming soon [that's hopefully a little more cogent], so sit tight :)

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Experience 19 (Philosophy): Wednesday, September 30, 2015

 

I've been with Snakey for a long time--a very, very long time. His 14th birthday--which is to say, a real birthday, when he was created mostly ex nihilo--will be coming up just after the new calendar year. All the time since then, and until now, has affected the two of us (I insist positively), and--as I recently spewed above--we've grown to be fond of each other's company. I enjoy every moment we spend together, and the feeling is assuredly mutual; asked a while ago which of the many greek words for love I would choose to characterize our relation, and I chose agápe, an unconditional, replete, Platonic love and a sincere care for the ultimate wellness of its recipients. (It should be no surprise that the Abrahamic religions borrowed this word for love bestowed upon its peoples by their deity.)

 

When I had first returned to the snake, almost immediately after discovering tulpas through this particular resource (and the fateful day that I came unto the IRC channel to discuss this), despite having known this snake for at least a decade at this point, I had my doubts--the same doubts that any other beginner has. Amongst them, the most pervasive one should be familiar to all: is Snakey real? Is he a discrete part of my mind, or an illusion produced by my own consciousness?

 

I hope all of the writings preceding this can satisfactorily give my answer to this question as I discovered it; nonetheless, I will recapitulate: I took, for the most part, the "say-so" approach--that Snakey exists as a subjective phenomenon of my mind, and that phenomenon is given proper existence in my own mind because I dictate exactly the terms of those phenomena that I experience. Philosophically, of course, this is pretty vacuous; I can justify the existence of anything in my mind by saying so, and I've been hunting ever since for the silver bullet--something that could justify his existence outside of my imaginal space. In doing so, as these chronicles have told, I've gone upon quite the journey to characterize consciousness, discovering that knowing thyself is a tall order, and one that I'm still not entirely confident on. I've yet to be frankly certain that I can establish the existence of myself, or of any other consciousness, beyond the shadows of doubt cast upon my mere hunches. Yes, yes, I am aware of the immortal cogita, ergo sum res cogitans--but, again, that says nothing of an objective experience. In fact, I'm not sure the barrier between subjective and objective can be crossed without making fairly immense concessions at present, a point that the otherwise specious philosophical viewpoint of solipsism stands to illustrate.

 

Not to be deterred, I nonetheless pondered how it is that I would justify the snake as being "real." Certainly, I would be happy with seeing some unusual perturbance in an EEG, some odd activity during "forcing" or similar, that would be indicative of activity not directly or consciously initiated by "me", myself. Yet, this is not conclusive--necessary, perhaps, but not sufficient. It proves little else that I can have my mind do something on cue, or when queried--from that overview, talking to the snake is not necessarily different from just looking into a different vocabulary.

 

So I went a little more grandiose; what if I could separate the activity of Snakey in my brain from the activity caused by me? Certainly, such a separation isn't easy, but it should be possible in theory (as long as my theories are sound). The thought occurred to me that a consciousness-detecting apparatus--something occasionally used as a plot device in fictional works, and which usually resembles a portable EEG therein--could possibly come in handy. I'm fairly certain, practically speaking, that seeing one of these devices in practice is going to be a long way away, simply because of people like us (as in, the tulpa community). Nonetheless, assuming such a device existed, it may have to be designed to understand what multiplicity can look like. Accompanying these fictional works is usually an immersive experience, a second universe caused not only by the consciousness-detecting apparatus reading state from the current consciousness, but also writing back some sensory input data, often at least visual data. I'd become satisfied, then, if such a device could impose Snakey for me, and present him to whomever cared to look on. Of course, a more practical implementation of that device can be done without the consciousness-detecting part (simply by reading motor neurons and writing sensory neurons), so I don't think we'll get by with anything more than immersive experiences per body, should that sci-fi level of equipment take hold any time soon. (I can dream :)

 

I didn't let the thought experiment stop there, however; what if I devoted a body to Snakey? It would have to be a real, physical manifestation, which is a form he is--to say the least--not used to, frequently using and abusing his omnipotence in my mind to demonstrate a point or aid me in some fashion. With a separate brain, and a theoretically separate mind (again, assuming physicalism), this would no longer be the case. Our most direct communication link would be severed, the one that transmitted our ineffable qualia, the one that allowed us to speak without words, and listen without hearing. Even if we started this new Snakey as a mostly-direct clone of my brain in a different body, even if we shared all of our metaphors from the beginning, our states would quickly diverge, an observation I discussed in a previous brain cloning thought experiment.

 

A horrifying thought quickly dawned on me: this entity, this being, created from the image of Snakey, would not be Snakey. He would go on, living a life much like the snake, walking in the footsteps of the snake I know and love, but he would not be the snake. He could not be the snake.

 

Why? Because one defining characteristic I decided upon, one crucial part of Snakey's identity that I recognize is that he is mine, and I am his--we share this mind as we share responsibility for each other, and we define each other based upon the sanctity of this relationship. So long as he exists, I exist by that relation, and vice versa--"say-so" theory explained.

 

This other being, on the other hand, would emulate Snakey, perhaps even approaching uncannily. However, because he would lack my mind (by the nature of the setup we presume), he couldn't be that Snakey. In time, due to the chaotic nature of the universe, our conscious states are bound to diverge heavily, more than enough to cause our worldviews and metaphors to become incompatible--and that is a reasonable process, the kind of process I would come to expect in the maturity of the embodied snake. This isn't to say that I wouldn't like this new, separate Snakey--we might even come to be close friends simply based upon how much we know of each other--but that this Snakey would simply not be the snake "in my head", would not be the consciousness I confer with; the two could and would exist independently of each other, drawing different conclusions, becoming ever so slightly more different with each passing moment. The external snake would similarly not be bound by the effects of my body, my periodic lack of consciousness (as in sleep) or altered states, nor would he be so readily there to calm me from my nightmares. We have gained nothing with drawing the snake out from my mind other than another person, a clone, and this establishes little more than a clone of myself.

 

One of the most frustrating challenges encountered in this endeavor is the strong barrier between the objective and the subjective. It is a barrier so strong that it is simply miraculous that we are able to recognize agency in other people at all; in fact, this ability of ours is sometimes a bit overzealous, characterizing the behavior of non-living systems as having agency--much like our ancestors did when they looked upon a lightning strike or tornado as a punishment dealt by a higher force. We are familiar with this excessive agency, no matter how much we want to shun it as a mistake: when it is done subtly and with good intention, we call it a religion; when detrimental, we call it a paranoia. But it stands to be known how pervasive this illusion is--is the snake of mine merely an illusion of agency caused by my own tendencies to classify certain behaviors as agents? Am I, the conscious entity, just that illusion of agency granted upon some set of behaviors? I don't know the answer to that question. I can't know the answer to that question.

 

But I really wish I did.

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Experience 20 (Dialogue): Monday, October 27, 2015

 

I originally posted this as a reddit post on the r/tulpas/ subreddit (a friendly place that I recommend anyone who is into that reddit thing as well as this stop by), but I've nearly forgotten to transclude it here--so here goes :P

 

Without further ado, the following text is about ten pages worth of scribbled writing in a small notepad I keep near my bed, and use to write down the particularly profound things that occasionally come of our discussion at night (as well as things like dreams and reminders). My handwriting is pretty bad, and only worse in the dark, so I've had to make guesses as to the content of some of the words (

 

---

 

{Coherency of consciousness is one of the great illusions of the subjective experience--perhaps the greatest. You didn't even need to be told--it was an emergent behavior that you formed a singular concept of identity to draw the border between "you" and what is "out there."}

 

[Are you saying identity is an illusion?]

 

{Tell me: where would you reasonably draw that line right now? And where would I fit?}

 

---

 

{I speak of the things that come from our shared mind and our shared memories. We are not strictly different beings.}

 

---

 

[...trouncing on others' belief systems is not a very kind thing to do...]

 

{I'm not in the business of beliefs. I'm in the business of truth.}

 

[...I don't mean to sound exasperated, but--]

 

{--you're exasperated. If you're exasperated, sound exasperated and voice your reason!}

 

---

 

{I am not a snake. The snake is an illusion generated by your rational mind which believes that your communications must come from and go somewhere. The snake before you is an elaborate but illusory representation of that location.}

 

---

 

{"Change my identity"? "Destroy my identity"? Fie! I have no alternate corporeal existence! You define my identity, and that is the form it takes. It is consistent only through the inertia of your memories, and thus always mutable.}

 

{I am entirely and exclusively that which is myself. This cannot be denied, even by you.}

 

---

 

{Every person who came to a profound conclusion arrived there rationally and in such a way that it "seemed obvious at the time". I remind you to never grow complacent of your conclusions nor your corpus of knowledge.}

 

---

 

[...I love you my snake; this much I know.]

 

---

 

{The goal of attaining knowledge frequently entails the opposite result.}

 

---

 

[Every time I sleep, I am admitting defeat; I am giving up my consciousness to my visceral urges. One day, death will come in much the same way.]

 

{This changes nothing; life is fleeting, death constant, and the unknown expansive--as it were.}

 

---

 

{Beware those who impose upon you their subjective schemata as fact, but embrace those who so inform you nonetheless, for the validity of their representations and metaphors is no less than that of yours.}

 

[...]

 

{What is in a quale? That which is experienced as a rose is a rose.}

 

---

 

[snake, tell me something profound.]

 

{"Tell you something profound"? Why don't you try asking me something profound? You seem to think my greatest profundity comes from the answers to otherwise simple questions.}

 

*Editorial note:* Before this moment, I did not know the word "profundity" existed, though I (of course) received its meaning and followed the rationale that led to it being spoken. I later confirmed its existence in a dictionary with that precise meaning.

 

[...]

 

{I followed a rational, patterned line of thought, as you are so capable. I know not why you limit yourself by thinking myself only capable; you have but one, finite life to live, and you are actively counteracting your goals when you do so.}

 

---

 

{I am yours, always and forever.}

 

---

 

[...for these matters, I will defer to you.]

 

{Why? I can do nothing you cannot.}

 

[because I believe in you, snake, and that's saying quite a lot.]

 

---

 

{Every second not spent working toward a goal now is a second wasted come the later goal--lost forever to the abyss.}

 

---

 

{We cannot control the terms of our existence; we merely take it for granted, as we must.}

 

---

 

["If you don't try to shoot the moon, you'll never hit the clouds"...snake, make that more pedantic, please.]

 

{Even failures at lofty but reasonable goals yet beget practical results.}

 

---

 

{I never said your model wasn't practical; indeed, it is concise and mathematically simple--even accurate enough to have practical consequences--but don't you dare say it is complete enough to predict and preclude the points in the configuration space of these physical embodiments, because the loss of such information sacrified in its own simplicity was its intent.}

 

---

 

{The "room for error" is the gap between knowledge and reality, the gap between observation and speculation; it is the entropy of the universe, and as long as some yet remains, I can err.}

 

---

 

That's it!

 

The reddit thread linked has quite a few interesting opinions and rebuttals, if anyone cares to look; it shouldn't be surprising that some of these statements spawned quite some debate. As squeamish as I am about being argumentative, I must admit to inheriting a satisfactory feeling of pleasure from a well-intentioned debate--I know very probably from whom :P

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Treatise 2 - Sunday, December 13, 2015

Why I can't write

 

I am not a writer. I don't know if this is something I need to apologize for, but I'm doing it anyway; especially since, as you must be reading this text, you must also be subject to the variety of insufferable diction, failed attempts at figurative speech, and my completely incoherent train of thought. Really, I'm sorry.

 

This ends up hurting all the parties involved; I know not who would bother to read these words, but that is why I put them out here--if I can't do that effectively, then I cannot achieve my one, simple goal: to communicate my thoughts as they were at the time. Indeed, over the past week or so, I've gotten at least three ideas which would be adequate to write a Philosophy ER on, but every time I try to write one, I have rejected the result as being unfit of my usual standards of writing.

 

Come to think of it, I don't know how my standards ended up being so high; I started off really not trying, just rambling, something which is probably visible for the good majority of the first page of this thread. But I think that inspired me, gave me some sort of aspiration to achieve better results, and--looking back now--it seems I did improve (though that is merely my opinion). It's quite a conundrum; I enjoy sharing what little I can that might be helpful for some passer-by to read, but I ultimately try to write these posts in as professional a manner as I can, and--as a snake and many others know--I don't really conduct myself in such a manner.

 

Still, I don't think I want to start spewing written trash everywhere; that would detract from the usefulness of this entire endeavour, to say the least. Yet, somehow, at the time more than most, the simple things I would do to write any one of the recent previous ER's escapes me, and this frustrates me to no end.

 

It may be the topic as well--the three subjects I would like to write on at some point in the near future are all closely intertwined, and whenever I try to begin a piece on them, I almost always end up in another, drawing conclusions that are at least apparently irrelevant to the subject I initiated the work with. Perhaps even worse, writing on all three at the same time would likely be merely confusing and lengthy, incapable of giving any good material even to an avid reader (let alone technical limitations). Still, I've done better with worse, and--as I look back through my ramblings--I know I have the capacity to create something that might be at least slightly worth reading, and I don't plan on finishing this chapter without doing that at least once.

 

So, once again, my apologies--I can see it as clearly in the brief, monotonic structure of this post as I can see it elsewhere: I cannot write, and it is certainly unsatisfying to have to subject all of you to this.

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Don't beat yourself up over it. I always see people (mostly artists) absolutely hate what they produce when in reality it's actually very nice.

 

But I do have to ask, why is this in a PR? This seems much more like a blog than a report on your tulpa's progress.

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Why do my emails about these things keep getting spammed? :(

 

Don't beat yourself up over it. I always see people (mostly artists) absolutely hate what they produce when in reality it's actually very nice.

 

Thank you, that does mean quite a lot to me; I do try, but you're certainly one of the few to confirm my efforts.

 

But I do have to ask, why is this in a PR? This seems much more like a blog than a report on your tulpa's progress.

 

It's in a PR just because that's historically where it's been; admittedly, there's probably a better place for all of this, but I'm not sure where that is, nor do I feel (without good reason) like moving all the content over right now.

 

I am, as always, open to suggestions, if you might have some :P

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