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.
I think the process illustrates that a brain process can run quite well without any conscious attention.
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?
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.
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?
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 you would just use technology to target a mental barries and nuke it I think there a pretty good chance that you do serious mental damage.
Using technology to get power when you don't have the maturity and wisdom to use that power in the right way is dangerous. Especially when it comes to dealing with core mental issues.
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)
(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