Only in a very specific sense of “exist”. Do hallucinations exist? That-which-is-being-hallucinated does not, but the mental phenomenon does exist.
One might in a similar vein interpret the question “do tulpas exist?” as “are there people who can deliberately run additional minds on their wetware and interact with these minds by means of a hallucinatory avatar?”. I would argue that the tulpa’s inability to do anything munchkiny is evidence against their existence even in this far weaker sense.
If domain experts say that the obvious ways to exploit having a tulpa fail, they are probably right.
By “do something munchkiny”, I meant these “obvious ways to exploit having a tulpa”, presumably including remembering things you don’t and other cognitive enhancements.
Why do I think they can’t? Because the (hypothetical?) domain experts say so.
Tulpas don’t seem to work for cognitive muchkining, which makes sense because the brain should be able to do those in a less indirect way using meditative or hypnosis techniques focused more on that instead. It’s more like a specific piece of technology than a new law of nature. Tulpas don’t improve cognitive efficiency for the same reason having humanoid robots carry around external harddrives don’t improve internet bandwidth.
They are guesstimates/first impressions of what community consensus likely is, as well as my personal version of common sense. A random comment without modifiers on the internet generally implies something like that, not that there is mountains of rock hard evidence behind every vague assertion. I’d not put this in a top level post in main, which is closely related to why I’m likely never write any top level posts in main.
Sorry, I misinterpreted your assertion that “Tulpas don’t seem to work for cognitive muchkining” as either speaking from experience or by reading about the subject. That surprised me, given that many mental techniques, direct or indirect, do indeed measurably improve “cognitive efficiency”. In retrospect, I phrased my question poorly.
Well indirectly they might, if say loneliness is a limiting factor on your productivity. And as I implied apparently-to-subtly with the first post they probably do help in an absolute sense, it’s just that there are more effective ways with less side effects to do the same thing with a subset of the resources needed for one. Again, this is just guesses based on an unreliable “common sense” more than anything.
Domain experts saying that the obvious ways to exploit a phenomenon fail is usually evidence against the existence of said phenomenon.
Your link advocates appeal to something more reliable than domain experts: Observed response to large market incentives.
Yes, but we already know tulpas don’t actually exist.
Only in a very specific sense of “exist”. Do hallucinations exist? That-which-is-being-hallucinated does not, but the mental phenomenon does exist.
One might in a similar vein interpret the question “do tulpas exist?” as “are there people who can deliberately run additional minds on their wetware and interact with these minds by means of a hallucinatory avatar?”. I would argue that the tulpa’s inability to do anything munchkiny is evidence against their existence even in this far weaker sense.
What do you mean by munchkiny (having apparent free will separate from the host?) and how do you know they cannot?
I was taking a statement from this great-grandparent post and surrounding posts at face value
By “do something munchkiny”, I meant these “obvious ways to exploit having a tulpa”, presumably including remembering things you don’t and other cognitive enhancements.
Why do I think they can’t? Because the (hypothetical?) domain experts say so.
Tulpas don’t seem to work for cognitive muchkining, which makes sense because the brain should be able to do those in a less indirect way using meditative or hypnosis techniques focused more on that instead. It’s more like a specific piece of technology than a new law of nature. Tulpas don’t improve cognitive efficiency for the same reason having humanoid robots carry around external harddrives don’t improve internet bandwidth.
Are these “logical” assertions or have there been studies you can link to?
They are guesstimates/first impressions of what community consensus likely is, as well as my personal version of common sense. A random comment without modifiers on the internet generally implies something like that, not that there is mountains of rock hard evidence behind every vague assertion. I’d not put this in a top level post in main, which is closely related to why I’m likely never write any top level posts in main.
Sorry, I misinterpreted your assertion that “Tulpas don’t seem to work for cognitive muchkining” as either speaking from experience or by reading about the subject. That surprised me, given that many mental techniques, direct or indirect, do indeed measurably improve “cognitive efficiency”. In retrospect, I phrased my question poorly.
Well indirectly they might, if say loneliness is a limiting factor on your productivity. And as I implied apparently-to-subtly with the first post they probably do help in an absolute sense, it’s just that there are more effective ways with less side effects to do the same thing with a subset of the resources needed for one. Again, this is just guesses based on an unreliable “common sense” more than anything.