The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge is offered by the James Randi Educational

[Dr. Faust]

waffles, you are a very pointed person and for that I appreciate you because honestly, you're probably prevented this from becoming too circle-jerky. However, I'm not dissuaded just yet. Let me attempt to answer your questions in kind to your satisfaction:

 

We can't email them yet becase we need some sort of media acknowledgement or book or something to show that we're actually serious. They've been contacted by plenty of people who think that they can all of a sudden just win the contest and they're tired of people doing that. So I could try to contact them, but a guy who's put some legwork in before he contacts them is going to hold more weight than the guy who's only been tulpaforcing for 32 days.

 

You can't copyright Tulpa or patent them but you can easily copyright books about them. I'm not sure if you could trademark the word Tulpa, but if you wanted to you could trademark Tulpamancy or Tulpaforce or some boring derivative. The actual book is more important than the concept which is free for anyone to use.

 

And for the record, it is not cool when people blatantly steal intellectual property (and I'm not talking torrenting, I'm talking plagiarism where someone else steals your work and then makes money). Granted copyright law is fucked in the United States, but at least those who take advantage of copyright can get compensated for their work.

 

Making Yourself Hear Voices: The Book would be amazing because it guarantees results. How many Christians have been waiting for God to talk to them? I can tell you it's very hard to believe in an entity that you don't feel the presence of directly and Tulpa very much resemble the way most people would like to interact with God (recovering Catholic just to give you context).

 

I just really like the concept of Tulpa. I think it's a great concept even if it does seem a bit loony.

 

I don't think writing the book or trying to win the JREF challenge would help you but I'm excited by the concept. I think it'd just be a fun thing to do for the community. Sure, we could all fail miserably but bringing the community to write a book or compilation or even just a free PDF that compiles everything we know would be more fun than all of us just keeping to ourselves.

 

Also, let me state that I realize that I'm still an outsider to the community. I'm still trying to become part of the community and understand it and appreciate it. I by no means speak for it, but I'd just like to become a part of it and I saw this topic as an opportunity. I'm sorry if I spoke with too familiar a tone in this regard.

 

Even you've written a guide, bro. You know what it's like to want to help people out so even if we help no one out, you could at least sympathize with us for wanting to try. Granted the eventual goal is to win a 1 million dollar contest, it's only going to happen if we work together initially and write the book or guide or PDF first.

 

Finally, I'm still actively working with my Tulpa so I'm still learning and have very little to teach. I just like working on projects like this and thought it might be a way to learn more about Tulpa. I'm sorry if it seemed like I was getting too big for my britches.

[waffles]

We can't email them yet becase we need some sort of media acknowledgement or book or something to show that we're actually serious. They've been contacted by plenty of people who think that they can all of a sudden just win the contest and they're tired of people doing that. So I could try to contact them, but a guy who's put some legwork in before he contacts them is going to hold more weight than the guy who's only been tulpaforcing for 32 days.

You don't have to prove anything; I was only proposing that you enquire whether you would be eligible.

 

You can't copyright Tulpa or patent them but you can easily copyright books about them. I'm not sure if you could trademark the word Tulpa, but if you wanted to you could trademark Tulpamancy or Tulpaforce or some boring derivative. The actual book is more important than the concept which is free for anyone to use.

Oh, you meant literary copyright. I wasn't thinking about that because it's automatically granted.

 

Making Yourself Hear Voices: The Book would be amazing because it guarantees results. How many Christians have been waiting for God to talk to them? I can tell you it's very hard to believe in an entity that you don't feel the presence of directly and Tulpa very much resemble the way most people would like to interact with God (recovering Catholic just to give you context).

Christians would be interested in finding God, not making themselves hear voices. Unless you write a book and market it as the former you're not going to find many takers; and that would be a terrible thing to do.

 

I don't think writing the book or trying to win the JREF challenge would help you but I'm excited by the concept. I think it'd just be a fun thing to do for the community. Sure, we could all fail miserably but bringing the community to write a book or compilation or even just a free PDF that compiles everything we know would be more fun than all of us just keeping to ourselves.

There's nothing wrong with writing a book or other text, but writing one that aims to either make money or market the concept to others (or both) is what I object to.

But the main reason I'm talking is because I really don't think that there's any chance of getting Randi's money. Seriously, just ask them.

[Dr. Faust]

You don't have to prove anything; I was only proposing that you enquire whether you would be eligible.

 

I'll inquire, but I wouldn't take any initial response too seriously from them because we have little actual "influence" at the moment. If we were a more established movement, I'd say the interaction between JREF and Tulpa.info community would be so beneficial that the whether or not Tulpae are really supernatural or paranormal would be irrelevant.

 

 

Oh, you meant literary copyright. I wasn't thinking about that because it's automatically granted.

 

Which if it's similar to song copyright (which I'm most familiar with) expires if it's not actually registered with the Library of Congress in five years of completing a tangible copy. It's very important to be on top of stuff like that if you want to make a living from your intellectual property.

 

 

Christians would be interested in finding God, not making themselves hear voices. Unless you write a book and market it as the former you're not going to find many takers; and that would be a terrible thing to do.

 

It is terrible to con people. A lot of marketing does actually do this and I guess I should slow down my ideas for where to expand the community before I begin making decisions which could hurt us in the long run.

 

There's nothing wrong with writing a book or other text, but writing one that aims to either make money or market the concept to others (or both) is what I object to.

But the main reason I'm talking is because I really don't think that there's any chance of getting Randi's money. Seriously, just ask them.

 

Well, the only problem here is that the publishing industry and books would not exist if it were not possible to compensate the authors, printers, and distributors for their work.

 

I'm just saying that we could make money off the idea if we wanted to. And if we were to make money, there'd be more money in writing books and making films about Tulpa than there is in winning the JREF contest.

 

The whole topic was started on the basis of how do we make 1 million dollars so I naturally was trying to feed into that mindset (and honestly my own isn't the most selfless to begin with).

 

Naturally, the entire process must begin with a book that rather than just aiming to make money and market a concept, actually explains Tulpa and shows what they are. Something that allows people to make them if they want to. Our first aim is to help solidify this concept and the community. Then along the line if we make money that's cool and something that attracts the more materialistically motivated of us.

 

But I take your final point. I'll send out an email and see if I can get a response and there will be updates following this post. I'll check in later tonight most likely.

[Antylamon]

I don't view tulpas simply as "Making Yourself Hear Voices", I view them as a stepping stone.

 

One of the most erratic variables to ever determine a person's fate, second to environmental factors, is their own mind. Since environmental factors are obviously uncontrollable as a whole, being able to have more control over one's own mind seems to me a goal very worthy of pursuit. For instance, how many times has lack of motivation turned you away from doing something? How many times have emotions taken control of your actions? Numerous instances could have been prevented.

 

Having a tulpa is surreal because you basically willed a sentient being into existence. Why not take it to the next level by using that will to attain your goals?

 

If we want to make this control over our own minds our goal, whether it be for ourselves or for everyone, then the first thing to do is get professional interest in the topic. What better way to accomplish that than by getting JREF involved? They're basically daring people to come up with something huge for science.

[Dr. Faust]

I don't view tulpas simply as "Making Yourself Hear Voices", I view them as a stepping stone.

 

One of the most erratic variables to ever determine a person's fate, second to environmental factors, is their own mind. Since environmental factors are obviously uncontrollable as a whole, being able to have more control over one's own mind seems to me a goal very worthy of pursuit. For instance, how many times has lack of motivation turned you away from doing something? How many times have emotions taken control of your actions? Numerous instances could have been prevented.

 

Having a tulpa is surreal because you basically willed a sentient being into existence. Why not take it to the next level by using that will to attain your goals?

 

 

This reflects my exact reasoning for creating a tulpa.

 

Also, I sent an email yesterday which I will paste below. I will update when there is a response:

 

Subject: eligibility to enter based on how paranormal the phenomenon is

 

 

Hello,

 

I’d like to introduce myself as Faust. I am a member of the Tulpa.info community and though we are not ready to begin the test at this time we wanted to inquire if our phenomenon is paranormal enough to win your million dollar challenge.

 

The phenomenon that we would like to test is the existence of a second consciousness or entity within ourselves (or more specifically mind). This consciousness is independent from our self-identity, is able to think on it’s own and appears to us through visualization (imagination) or imposition onto our senses. We actively create this consciousness until it becomes independent enough to maintain itself within our mind.

 

 

This phenomenon is very similar to the occult rituals of evocations wherein an entity can be summoned. Though this entity can only impose itself on it’s host, we hope that eventually we can confirm the existence of tulpa by a third party by measurement of brain activity.

 

I realize that there are a few hurdles that we must clear: we have to prove that we are not mentally ill, we have to somehow find out how we can confirm a second consciousness by a third party, and eventually we have to gain some kind of media recognition for our community and phenomenon.

 

However, after all of that, when we have all the qualifications the million dollar question would be: Is the phenomenon of hosting an independent consciousness within our mind paranormal enough to with the million dollar challenge?

 

Thank you for your time and have a great week,

Faust

[Shui]

In my humble opinion, Randi will say that tulpas are just hallucinations. Yeah, you can do impressive things with parallel processing and eidetic memory but these are things that people without tulpas can do as well. To win the money, you'd have to prove that tulpas can do things that the mind is not capable of on its own, like reading numbers off a piece of paper that you yourself have never seen, or moving objects that you're not touching.

[Guest MegaBusta]

Like sending my tulpas to the ashakic records and getting the delicious forbidden knowledg3?

[Shui]

It's too hard to test empirically. You need to be able to acquire knowledge available to Randi, but not to the general public.

[Antylamon]

Speaking of humble, I would be very humbled to see Randi taking tulpas seriously, especially since this particular series of events was started by myself. After all, I was the one who started the JREF thread in meta. :P

[Dr. Faust]

Speaking of humble, I would be very humbled to see Randi taking tulpas seriously, especially since this particular series of events was started by myself. After all, I was the one who started the JREF thread in meta. :P

 

I'm not sure how seriously he's going to take a random email. I haven't gotten the response yet if you can't tell.

 

I don't know if I will get a response. I believe that we'd do better to build up a little clout or political muscle if you will before we'd really ask Randi anything.

 

Right now as a rather benign internet community there is no reason to allow us to win the challenge. If we were established with published works and media acknowledgement (as is the eligibility requirement to enter), then maybe we would force the JREF's hand.

 

The way I say it, Tulpa's are just paranormal enough. They might not seem paranormal to us, but we're the sort of people who force them. Some of us have had tulpa for months, some for years; we might take them for granted. While tulpa aren't really supernatural, they are pretty weird.

 

If the JREF had a reason to (like gaining more exposure and attracting more donors and showing it is willing to work with the paranormal community instead of actively discrediting it), they'd test Tulpae and we'd win a million dollars (especially if the JREF stood to gain another million dollars from our collaboration). If we remain a small internet community without merit of published work, then I'll agree that the JREF will most likely reject our claim.

 

I can't help but think that JREF after all this time wouldn't mind letting a well organized group with a well organized effort win the challenge if only because they have more to gain by letting someone win than if they just prevent everyone from winning.