Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

D_Malik

A Munchkin is the sort of person who, faced with a role-playing game, reads through the rulebooks over and over until he finds a way to combine three innocuous-seeming magical items into a cycle of infinite wish spells. Or who, in real life, composes a surprisingly effective diet out of drinking a quarter-cup of extra-light olive oil at least one hour before and after tasting anything else. Or combines liquid nitrogen and antifreeze and life-insurance policies into a ridiculously cheap method of defeating the invincible specter of unavoidable Death. Or figures out how to build the real-life version of the cycle of infinite wish spells.

It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.

So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.

Thus spake Eliezer:

A Munchkin is the sort of person who, faced with a role-playing game, reads through the rulebooks over and over until he finds a way to combine three innocuous-seeming magical items into a cycle of infinite wish spells. Or who, in real life, composes a surprisingly effective diet out of drinking a quarter-cup of extra-light olive oil at least one hour before and after tasting anything else. Or combines liquid nitrogen and antifreeze and life-insurance policies into a ridiculously cheap method of defeating the invincible specter of unavoidable Death. Or figures out how to build the real-life version of the cycle of infinite wish spells.

You don't classify each type of .e.g voice hallucinated with schizophrenia. You could for example apply your argument to say "well, is the voice threatening to kill you only if you don't study for your test? If so, isn't the net effect beneficial, and as such it's not really a mental illness? If you like being motivated by your voices, you don't suffer from schizophrenia, that's only for people who dislike their voices."

I certainly cannot prove that there are no situations in which hallucinating imaginary people giving you advice would not be net beneficial, in fact, there certainly are situations in which any given potential mental illness may be beneficial. There have been studies about certain potential mental illnesses being predominant (or at least overrepresented) in certain professions, sometimes to the professional's benefit (also: taking cocaine may be beneficial. Certain tulpas may be beneficial.).

Who knows, maybe an unknown grand-uncle will leave a fortune to you, predicated on you being a drug-addict. In which case being a drug-addict would have been beneficial.

People dabble in alcohol to get a social edge, they usually refrain from heroin. Which reference class is a tulpa most like?

You can put a "Your Mileage May Vary" disclaimer to any advice, but actually hallucinating persons who then interact with you seems like it should belong in the DSM (where it is) way more than it should belong in a self-help guide.

Maybe when plenty of people have used tulpas for decades, and a representative sample of them can be used to prove their safety, there will be enough evidence to switch the reference class, to introduce a special case in the form of "hallucinations are a common symptom of schizophrenia, except tulpas". Until then, the default case would be using the reference class of "effects of hallucinating people", which is presumed harmful unless shown to be otherwise.

Which reference class is a tulpa most like?

Isn't this a failure mode with a catchy name?

16Richard_Kennaway13y

Never happen if no-one tries. I agree that it looks dangerous, but this is the ridiculous munchkin ideas thread, not the boring advice or low-hanging fruit threads. Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d go away...

4kalium13y

Actually, the DSM does have an exception for "culturally accepted" or "non-bizarre" delusions. It's pretty subjective and I imagine in practice the exceptions granted are mostly religious in nature, but there's definitely a level of acceptance past which the DSM wouldn't consider having a tulpa to be a disorder at all. Furthermore, hallucinations are neither necessary or sufficient for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Disorganized thought, "word salad", and flat affect are just as important, and a major disruption to the patient's life must also be demonstrated.

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