What do these have to do with rationality? Why would you exert time and energy conjuring up a false persona and deluding yourself into believing it has autonomy when the end result is something that if revealed to other people would make them concerned about your mental well-being, which is likely to negatively impact your goals?
Having an imaginary friend is irrational behaviour and the topic is damaging by association. Surely there are more suitable places to discuss this.
...just to be clear on this, you have a persistent hallucination who follows you around and offers you rationality advice and points out fallacies in your thinking?
For a community which likes to talk about things like the exact nature of consciousness, ethics of simulations, etc. this seemed like an interesting practical case
Rationality includes instrumental rationality, and imaginary friends can be useful for e.g. people who are lonely.
deluding yourself into believing it has autonomy
Not sure of what exactly you mean by “autonomy” here, but there are plenty of processes going on in people’s brains which are in some sense autonomous from one’s conscious mind. Like the person-emulating circuitry that tulpas are likely born from: if I get a sudden feeling that my friend would disapprove of something I was doing, the process responsible for generating that feeling took autonomous action without me consciously prompting it. And I haven’t noticed people suggesting that tulpas would necessarily need to be much more autonomous than that.
that if revealed to other people would make them concerned about your mental well-being
Someone might make his social circle concerned over his mental well-being if he revealed himself to be an atheist. Simply the fact that other people may be prejudiced against something is no strong reason for not doing said something, especially something that is trivial to hide. Also, the fact that tulpas are already a somewhat common mental quirk among a high-status subgroup (writers) can make it easier to calm people’s concerns.
and imaginary friends can be useful for e.g. people who are lonely.
The instrumentally rational thing to do, when faced with loneliness, is to figure out how to be with real people. No evidence was presented in the original post that suggests that tulpas mitigate the very real risk factors associated with social isolation. Loneliness is actually a very serious problem, considering most of the research seems to indicate that the best way to be happy is to have meaningful social interactions. Proposing this as a viable alternative would require a very high amount of evidence. A post presenting that evidence would be something that belongs here.
Proposing this as a viable alternative would require a very high amount of evidence.
I don’t see where you got the idea that it’s supposed to be an alternative.
If I’m less clingy because I have a Tupla and thus no fear of being alone I have an easier time interacting with other people.
Proposing this as a viable alternative would require a very high amount of evidence.
There are much bigger claims on this side with much less evidence. Just look into discussions of uploading and AGI.
Nobody hear advocates that it should be standard procedure to train every lonely person who seeks help to have a tulpa.
I know a couple of people who feel like their tulpas reduce their feelings of loneliness. Not sure of how you could get any stronger evidence than that at this stage, there not being any studies focusing specifically on tulpas. That said, I don’t see any a priori reason for why you couldn’t get meaningful social interactions from tulpas, so not sure for why you’d require an exceptionally high standard of evidence in the first place.
They don’t provide it to the system as a whole, but providing it to the subprocess constituting the normal personality is another matter. Author are often surprised by their characters, who may reveal having unexpected personality traits as well as doing things that the author would never have anticipated before. (Sometimes causing major headaches to the authors, as this ruins the original story that they’d planned out when the character decides to do something completely different.)
Also, “having a tulpa” and “figuring out how to be with real people” are not mutually exclusive. Lonely people may often have extra difficulties establishing meaningful relationships (romantic or otherwise), because the loneliness makes them desperate, clingy, etc. which are all behaviors that other people find off-putting. People who already have some meaningful relationships are likely to have a much easier time in establishing more.
It depends whether the company that you seek values people who signal that they are contrarian or whether people are expected to be “normal”.
In general the idea isn’t that you will tell everyone that you meet about the fact that you have a tulpa if you interact with the kind of people who would see it as a sign of mental illnesses.
Given that tulpas are in your mind you don’t have to tell anyone about them.
Why would you exert time and energy conjuring up a false persona and deluding yourself into believing it has autonomy
Autonomy is basically a question of free will. Given that various people have argued that humans don’t have free will and therefore no autonomy, tulpa probably have no autonomy as well.
If you however grant that humans do have some kind of autonomy in their actions it’s very interesting to see if tulpa also have autonomy for the same definition.
This means you can learn something about the nature of autonomy that’s useful.
What do these have to do with rationality? Why would you exert time and energy conjuring up a false persona and deluding yourself into believing it has autonomy when the end result is something that if revealed to other people would make them concerned about your mental well-being, which is likely to negatively impact your goals?
Having an imaginary friend is irrational behaviour and the topic is damaging by association. Surely there are more suitable places to discuss this.
For a community which likes to talk about things like the exact nature of consciousness, ethics of simulations, etc. this seemed like an interesting practical case
I don’t agree with the tone of this comment, but I admit there’s something about this that feels deeply weird to me.
Yes.
But the detriments of tulpas are far less obvious to me than those of self-harm or anorexia.
Rationality includes instrumental rationality, and imaginary friends can be useful for e.g. people who are lonely.
Not sure of what exactly you mean by “autonomy” here, but there are plenty of processes going on in people’s brains which are in some sense autonomous from one’s conscious mind. Like the person-emulating circuitry that tulpas are likely born from: if I get a sudden feeling that my friend would disapprove of something I was doing, the process responsible for generating that feeling took autonomous action without me consciously prompting it. And I haven’t noticed people suggesting that tulpas would necessarily need to be much more autonomous than that.
Someone might make his social circle concerned over his mental well-being if he revealed himself to be an atheist. Simply the fact that other people may be prejudiced against something is no strong reason for not doing said something, especially something that is trivial to hide. Also, the fact that tulpas are already a somewhat common mental quirk among a high-status subgroup (writers) can make it easier to calm people’s concerns.
The instrumentally rational thing to do, when faced with loneliness, is to figure out how to be with real people. No evidence was presented in the original post that suggests that tulpas mitigate the very real risk factors associated with social isolation. Loneliness is actually a very serious problem, considering most of the research seems to indicate that the best way to be happy is to have meaningful social interactions. Proposing this as a viable alternative would require a very high amount of evidence. A post presenting that evidence would be something that belongs here.
I don’t see where you got the idea that it’s supposed to be an alternative. If I’m less clingy because I have a Tupla and thus no fear of being alone I have an easier time interacting with other people.
There are much bigger claims on this side with much less evidence. Just look into discussions of uploading and AGI.
Nobody hear advocates that it should be standard procedure to train every lonely person who seeks help to have a tulpa.
I know a couple of people who feel like their tulpas reduce their feelings of loneliness. Not sure of how you could get any stronger evidence than that at this stage, there not being any studies focusing specifically on tulpas. That said, I don’t see any a priori reason for why you couldn’t get meaningful social interactions from tulpas, so not sure for why you’d require an exceptionally high standard of evidence in the first place.
Tulpa don’t provide outside entropy.
They don’t provide it to the system as a whole, but providing it to the subprocess constituting the normal personality is another matter. Author are often surprised by their characters, who may reveal having unexpected personality traits as well as doing things that the author would never have anticipated before. (Sometimes causing major headaches to the authors, as this ruins the original story that they’d planned out when the character decides to do something completely different.)
Also, “having a tulpa” and “figuring out how to be with real people” are not mutually exclusive. Lonely people may often have extra difficulties establishing meaningful relationships (romantic or otherwise), because the loneliness makes them desperate, clingy, etc. which are all behaviors that other people find off-putting. People who already have some meaningful relationships are likely to have a much easier time in establishing more.
It depends whether the company that you seek values people who signal that they are contrarian or whether people are expected to be “normal”.
In general the idea isn’t that you will tell everyone that you meet about the fact that you have a tulpa if you interact with the kind of people who would see it as a sign of mental illnesses.
Given that tulpas are in your mind you don’t have to tell anyone about them.
Autonomy is basically a question of free will. Given that various people have argued that humans don’t have free will and therefore no autonomy, tulpa probably have no autonomy as well.
If you however grant that humans do have some kind of autonomy in their actions it’s very interesting to see if tulpa also have autonomy for the same definition.
This means you can learn something about the nature of autonomy that’s useful.