Tulpa References/Discussion

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23 Tulpa References/Discussion

2nd Jan 2014

2 min read

23

There have been a number of discussions here on LessWrong about "tulpas", but it's been scattered about with no central thread for the discussion. So I thought I would put this up here, along with a centralized list of reliable information sources, just so we all stay on the same page.

Tulpas are deliberately created "imaginary friends" which in many ways resemble separate, autonomous minds. Often, the creation of a tulpa is coupled with deliberately induced visual, auditory, and/or tactile hallucinations of the being.

Previous discussions here on LessWrong: 1 2 3

Questions that have been raised:

1. How do tulpas work?

2. Are tulpas safe, from a mental health perspective?

3. Are tulpas conscious? (may be a hard question)

4. More generally, is making a tulpa a good idea? What are they useful for?

Pertinent Links and Publications

(I will try to keep this updated if/when further sources are found)

In this article¹, the psychological anthropologist Tanya M. Luhrmann connects tulpas to the "voice of God" experienced by devout evangelicals - a phenomenon more thoroughly discussed in her book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Luhrmann has also succeeded² in inducing tulpa-like visions of Leland Stanford, jr. in experimental subjects.
This paper³ investigates the phenomenon of authors who experience their characters as "real", which may be tulpas by yet another name.
There is an active subreddit of people who have or are developing tulpas, with an FAQ, links to creation guides, etc.
tulpa.info is a valuable resource, particularly the forum. There appears to be a whole "research" section for amateur experiments and surveys.
This particular experiment suggests that the idea of using tulpas to solve problems faster is a no-go.
Also, one person helpfully hooked themselves up to an EEG and then performed various mental activities related to their tulpa.
Another possibly related phenomenon is the way that actors immerse themselves in their characters. See especially the section on "Masks" in Keith Johnstone's book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (related quotations and video)⁴.
This blogger has some interesting ideas about the neurological basis of tulpas, based on Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a book whose scientific validity is not clear to me.
It is not hard to find new age mystical books about the use of "thoughtforms", or the art of "channeling" "spirits", often clearly talking about the same phenomenon. These books are likely to be low in useful information for our purposes, however. Therefore I'm not going to list the ones I've found here, as they would clutter up the list significantly.
(Updated 2/9/2015) The abstract of a paper by our very own Kaj Sotala hypothesizing about the mechanisms behind tulpa creation.⁵

(Bear in mind while perusing these resources that if you have serious qualms about creating a tulpa, it might not be a good idea to read creation guides too carefully; making a tulpa is easy to do and, at least for me, was hard to resist. Proceed at your own risk.)

Footnotes

1. "Conjuring Up Our Own Gods", a 14 October 2013 New York Times Op-Ed

2. "Hearing the Voice of God" by Jill Wolfson in the July/August 2013 Stanford Alumni Magazine

3. "The Illusion of Independent Agency: Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience Their Characters as Having Minds of Their Own?"; Taylor, Hodges & Kohànyi in Imagination, Cognition and Personality; 2002/2003; 22, 4

4. Thanks to pure_awesome

5. "Sentient companions predicted and modeled into existence: explaining the tulpa phenomenon" by Kaj Sotala

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23 Tulpa References/Discussion

by Vulture

2nd Jan 2014

2 min read

23

Previous discussions here on LessWrong: 1 2 3

Questions that have been raised:

1. How do tulpas work?

2. Are tulpas safe, from a mental health perspective?

3. Are tulpas conscious? (may be a hard question)

4. More generally, is making a tulpa a good idea? What are they useful for?

Pertinent Links and Publications

(I will try to keep this updated if/when further sources are found)

In this article¹, the psychological anthropologist Tanya M. Luhrmann connects tulpas to the "voice of God" experienced by devout evangelicals - a phenomenon more thoroughly discussed in her book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Luhrmann has also succeeded² in inducing tulpa-like visions of Leland Stanford, jr. in experimental subjects.
This paper³ investigates the phenomenon of authors who experience their characters as "real", which may be tulpas by yet another name.
There is an active subreddit of people who have or are developing tulpas, with an FAQ, links to creation guides, etc.
tulpa.info is a valuable resource, particularly the forum. There appears to be a whole "research" section for amateur experiments and surveys.
This particular experiment suggests that the idea of using tulpas to solve problems faster is a no-go.
Also, one person helpfully hooked themselves up to an EEG and then performed various mental activities related to their tulpa.
Another possibly related phenomenon is the way that actors immerse themselves in their characters. See especially the section on "Masks" in Keith Johnstone's book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (related quotations and video)⁴.
This blogger has some interesting ideas about the neurological basis of tulpas, based on Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a book whose scientific validity is not clear to me.
It is not hard to find new age mystical books about the use of "thoughtforms", or the art of "channeling" "spirits", often clearly talking about the same phenomenon. These books are likely to be low in useful information for our purposes, however. Therefore I'm not going to list the ones I've found here, as they would clutter up the list significantly.
(Updated 2/9/2015) The abstract of a paper by our very own Kaj Sotala hypothesizing about the mechanisms behind tulpa creation.⁵

Footnotes

1. "Conjuring Up Our Own Gods", a 14 October 2013 New York Times Op-Ed

2. "Hearing the Voice of God" by Jill Wolfson in the July/August 2013 Stanford Alumni Magazine

4. Thanks to pure_awesome

5. "Sentient companions predicted and modeled into existence: explaining the tulpa phenomenon" by Kaj Sotala

Tulpamancy

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23

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listic12y10

I believe that tulpas expend host's attention, unless proven otherwise.

Why do you think that attention is a central part of human thinking?

Here's what I am thinking: Attention seems to be a crucial and finite resource. I could certainly become more productive if I become more attentive, and vice versa. If creating a tulpa expends my attention, it is a negative-sum game for me; if it makes me training attention as a side effect, that's good, but not better than just training attention.

Have you never had the experience that you searched for a piece of information in your mind and can't find it, then two hours later it pops into your mind?

Sure! Sometimes I try hard to remember a piece of information, but can't. Then later, when I don't try, it just pops. Interesting, but usually unhelpful.

From what I read of the field there nobody even making a business out of the topic

Shouldn't the fact that nobody ever made a business out of the topic be counted as evidence towards impossibility to make a business out of the topic? If tulpas were monetizable in any way, why wouldn't there be people monetizing them?

Now, I fantasize that maybe our minds just need some tiny little upgrade for tulpas to become a clear advantage? Can you help me imagine what would that be?

Yuu12y00

Exocortex is what you need.

There are methods to remember things better, to wake up at a specific time, to make unconscious mind work for you. The last one may be disputable technique, because there are still debates regarding work of unconscious mind. But you do not need tulpa for that.

By the way, I have some well-detailed characters from role-playing game of mine, they act much like tulpas but without visual image in surrounding environment. I just have their pictures and appearances in mind. Another difference is that the most of them do not know about m... (read more)

1ChristianKl12y

I think the process illustrates that a brain process can run quite well without any conscious attention. [...] Given my current knowledge on the topic I can't see a 7-day build a Tulpa seminar. Given the reported timeframes, it seem unclear if you can achieve those results in that timeframe. A tulpa needs a lot of investment in cognitive resources over a timeframe that makes that business model hard. You could probably write a book about how you got a tulpa and that tulpa is amazing. If you are a good writer that might sell copies and you can make money on speaking fees. But most of the customers in that model probably wouldn't build a tulpa. [...] Take a look at mnemonics. It's no problem for a human to memorize a deck of playing cards in a minute. Competitive mnemonics folks can memorize human faces and names in amazing speeds. Yet we live in a world where a lot of people are uncomfortable with memorizing names. Unfortunately explaining to those folks how to use mnemonics to remember names in a 2-day seminar usually doesn't have a lasting effect. They do manage to use the technique during the seminar without problems, but they can't integrate constant usage in their daily lives. Tulpa are a more complicated subject. If you would want to create a Tulpa that has the ability to change around your perception of time, that would need a strong amount of trust that the Tulpa will use his power wisely. If you can't manage to have that level of trust, you won't be successful. You can't pretend to cheat and pretend to trust the Tulpa. You can't make an utility calculation on paper and bring your brain to trust, on the level that required. You would need genuine deep trust. Issues like a lack of ability to switch on trust on command are the things that constrain what the average person will be able to do with a tulpa. But in some sense there are good reasons for having mental barriers that prevent you from easily changing things about your mind on that level. If y

1Armok_GoB12y

The problem is the thing that tulpas contribute is something 99% of people have in overabundance, and those that don't have it don't because it can't be transported to them efficiently not due to sacricity. Tulpas are duplicate of the software almost all human minds already run, and that software was already utilizing all the resources as effectively as it can any. Their only real use (companionship) is already a hack, and other than that they are a technical curiosity, sort of like quining computer programs.

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