Using dogs or other animals to detect tulpas?

[waffles]

Because animals lack complex language but still must communicate complex sentiment, they much communicate via body language instead. Where two humans would face off with words, two - say - cats would do it with things like eye contact, posture, fur position, small movement and so on. Of course, this makes animals good at perceiving the body language of humans - especially since we are not usually aware of it ourselves. As some have said before, this would lead to the conclusion that animals recognise alternate personalities by body language, rather than anything else.

 

Now, this would lead to verification of tulpas, except for the fact that altering body language is not all that difficult once you start to look at it. With enough practice, it would be possible to alter your body language in such a way as to make an animal perceive you as different. Because of this, verifying tulpas via body language during switching would not be reliable evidence, unfortunately.

[Lolimancer]

So what was "metaphysical" about this again?

[Guest]

Dogs detecting tuppers, and not just reacting to simple behavior changes. That's what.

[Sands]

Now, this would lead to verification of tulpas, except for the fact that altering body language is not all that difficult once you start to look at it. With enough practice, it would be possible to alter your body language in such a way as to make an animal perceive you as different. Because of this, verifying tulpas via body language during switching would not be reliable evidence, unfortunately.

 

Totally. Cat can trust me completely, beg for constant attention and hide behind me from scary things when I'm normal. But all I have to do it tense up and get in a sort of stalking position for him to be running all over the place.

[Onicron]

My ex's dog growled at Shai when she was possessing me or switched. I didn't notice anything different in the behaviour so there must have been something Shai wasn't able to replicate.

[Nonsense]

Dogs notice behavioral differences by nature and act accordingly, which would mean that during possession it is understandable that they would detect someone acting different than themselves. A dog would be able to recognize someone is acting strange, but detecting the activity of a tulpa specifically would be a matter of conditioning the animal to specific behaviors more so than being aware of an actual shift in personality.

[atomcrusader]

Very good points you all made. I was hoping that dogs can detect certain behaviors that serve as signatures distinct consciousness. However, this is at best a flaky notion without proper research into whether there are behaviors that are just impossible to fake. Heck, even fingerprints can be faked if we can steal the skin from the relevant person and apply them appropriately. At one point or another, it boils down to a reasonable degree of demonstration that the current active person is substantially different.

 

But I agree: even if we have a magical way to show that a second consciousness exists within one's head, we would like to show (or hope that it's the case!) that tulpas are benign. I do see a lot of similarities between a tulpa and an alter personality created through childhood trauma (the biggest difference being the often lack voluntary cooperation between the alter personalities.) It seems at the moment that we can only learn more about this by waiting to get more mature tulpa-creator relationships.

[Forge]

moving thread to general, no metaphysical aspect in this thread at all.

[Sands]

I love how this question was at first asked here, then told to move to metaphysical, then moved from metaphysical back here.

[Guest]

Forge is just being a skilled moderator. Don't judge him.