Yup—since posting that comment I actually checked with the tulpa community and they referred me to those very links. No data formally collected, but anecdotally people with tulpas aren’t reporting getting perfect scores.
I’m going with “use imagination, simulate personality” here, and am guessing any benefits relating to the tulpa are emotional and/or influencing what a person thinks about, rather than a separated neural network like what you’d get with a split brain or something.
The perceived inability to read the tulpa’s mind and the seemingly spontaneously complex nature of the tulpa’s voice is, I think, an artifact of our own inability to know what we think before we think it, similar to dream characters. As such, I don’t think there is any major distinction between a tulpa and a dream character, an imaginary friend, a character an author puts into a book, a deity being prayed too, and so on. That’s not to say tulpas are bs or uninteresting or anything—I’m sure they really can have personalities—it’s just that they aren’t distinct from various commonly experienced phenomenon that goes by other names. I don’t think I’d accord them moral status, beyond the psychological health of the “host”. (Although, I suspect to get a truly complex tulpa you have to believe it is a separate individual at some level—that’s how neurotypical people believe they can hear god’s voice and so on.)
I’ve got much respect to the community for empirically testing that hypotheses!
Yup—since posting that comment I actually checked with the tulpa community and they referred me to those very links. No data formally collected, but anecdotally people with tulpas aren’t reporting getting perfect scores.
I’m going with “use imagination, simulate personality” here, and am guessing any benefits relating to the tulpa are emotional and/or influencing what a person thinks about, rather than a separated neural network like what you’d get with a split brain or something.
The perceived inability to read the tulpa’s mind and the seemingly spontaneously complex nature of the tulpa’s voice is, I think, an artifact of our own inability to know what we think before we think it, similar to dream characters. As such, I don’t think there is any major distinction between a tulpa and a dream character, an imaginary friend, a character an author puts into a book, a deity being prayed too, and so on. That’s not to say tulpas are bs or uninteresting or anything—I’m sure they really can have personalities—it’s just that they aren’t distinct from various commonly experienced phenomenon that goes by other names. I don’t think I’d accord them moral status, beyond the psychological health of the “host”. (Although, I suspect to get a truly complex tulpa you have to believe it is a separate individual at some level—that’s how neurotypical people believe they can hear god’s voice and so on.)
I’ve got much respect to the community for empirically testing that hypotheses!