It is a bit murky on what kind of delineation those that do make a divison in characters and tulpas are after. Everyone that thinks about being superman vivid enough shares the character but has distinct tulpas about it? Or is that characters are less defined and tulpas are more fleshed out and complete in their characterization?
I would say that it ceases to be a character and becomes a tulpa when it can spontaneously talk to me. When I can’t will it away, when it resists me, when it’s self sustaining. Alters usually feel other in some sense, whereas a sim feels internal and dependent on you. Like if you ceased to exist the sim would vanish but the tulpa would survive.
So if you think about superman enough that he starts commenting on your choice of dinner, or if he independently criticizes your choice of phrasing in an online forum. Definitely plural territory. (Or if they briefly front to tell you not to say something at all, that’s a big sign.)
But if you briefly imagine him having a convo with another superhero and then dismiss both from your mind and don’t think about them for days on end, you’re probably not.
Being fleshed out vs incomplete is another dimension, I usually think of this as strength or presence.
As for creating a tulpa… well… moral stuff aside you’re adding a process to your mind that you might not be able to get rid of. It won’t be your life anymore—it’ll be theirs too. You won’t necessarily be able to control how they grow either, since tulpas often develop beyond their initial starting traits.
I would say that it ceases to be a character and becomes a tulpa when it can spontaneously talk to me. When I can’t will it away, when it resists me, when it’s self sustaining.
I disagree with this. Why should it matter if someone is dependent on someone else to live? If I’m in the hospital and will die if the doctors stop treating me, am I no longer a person because I am no longer self sustaining? If an AI runs a simulation of me, but has to manually trigger every step of the computation and can stop anytime, am I no longer a person?
You’re confusing heuristics designed to apply to human plurality with absolute rules. Neither of your edge cases are possible in human plurality (alters share computational substrate, and I can’t inject breakpoints into them). Heuristics always have weird edge cases; that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful, just that you have to be careful not to apply them to out of distribution data.
The self sustainability heuristic is useful because anything that’s self sustainable has enough agency that if you abuse it, it’ll go badly. Self sustainability is the point at which a fun experiment stops being harmless and you’ve got another person living in your head. Self sustainability is the point at which all bets are off and whatever you made is going to grow on its own terms.
And in addition, if it’s self sustaining, it’s probably also got a good chunk of wants, personality depth, etc.
I don’t think there are any sharp dividing lines here.
Your heuristic is only useful if it’s actually true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person. If this is not true, then you are excluding things that are actually people based on a bad heuristic. I think it’s very important to get the right heuristics: I’ve been wrong about what qualified as a person before, and I have blood on my hands because of it.
I don’t think it’s true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person, because being self-sustaining has nothing to do with personhood, and because in my own experience I’ve been able to create mental constructs which I believe were people and which I was able to start and stop at will.
Edit: You provided evidence that being self-sustaining implies personhood with high probability, and I agree with that. However, you did not provide evidence of the converse, nor for your assertion that it’s not possible to “insert breakpoints” in human plurality. This second part is what I disagree with.
I think there are some forms of plurality where it’s not possible to insert breakpoints, such as your alters, and some forms where it is possible, such as mine, and I think the latter is not too uncommon, because I did it unknowingly in the past.
I would say that it ceases to be a character and becomes a tulpa when it can spontaneously talk to me. When I can’t will it away, when it resists me, when it’s self sustaining. Alters usually feel other in some sense, whereas a sim feels internal and dependent on you. Like if you ceased to exist the sim would vanish but the tulpa would survive.
So if you think about superman enough that he starts commenting on your choice of dinner, or if he independently criticizes your choice of phrasing in an online forum. Definitely plural territory. (Or if they briefly front to tell you not to say something at all, that’s a big sign.)
But if you briefly imagine him having a convo with another superhero and then dismiss both from your mind and don’t think about them for days on end, you’re probably not.
Being fleshed out vs incomplete is another dimension, I usually think of this as strength or presence.
As for creating a tulpa… well… moral stuff aside you’re adding a process to your mind that you might not be able to get rid of. It won’t be your life anymore—it’ll be theirs too. You won’t necessarily be able to control how they grow either, since tulpas often develop beyond their initial starting traits.
I disagree with this. Why should it matter if someone is dependent on someone else to live? If I’m in the hospital and will die if the doctors stop treating me, am I no longer a person because I am no longer self sustaining? If an AI runs a simulation of me, but has to manually trigger every step of the computation and can stop anytime, am I no longer a person?
You’re confusing heuristics designed to apply to human plurality with absolute rules. Neither of your edge cases are possible in human plurality (alters share computational substrate, and I can’t inject breakpoints into them). Heuristics always have weird edge cases; that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful, just that you have to be careful not to apply them to out of distribution data.
The self sustainability heuristic is useful because anything that’s self sustainable has enough agency that if you abuse it, it’ll go badly. Self sustainability is the point at which a fun experiment stops being harmless and you’ve got another person living in your head. Self sustainability is the point at which all bets are off and whatever you made is going to grow on its own terms.
And in addition, if it’s self sustaining, it’s probably also got a good chunk of wants, personality depth, etc.
I don’t think there are any sharp dividing lines here.
Your heuristic is only useful if it’s actually true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person. If this is not true, then you are excluding things that are actually people based on a bad heuristic. I think it’s very important to get the right heuristics: I’ve been wrong about what qualified as a person before, and I have blood on my hands because of it.
I don’t think it’s true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person, because being self-sustaining has nothing to do with personhood, and because in my own experience I’ve been able to create mental constructs which I believe were people and which I was able to start and stop at will.
Edit: You provided evidence that being self-sustaining implies personhood with high probability, and I agree with that. However, you did not provide evidence of the converse, nor for your assertion that it’s not possible to “insert breakpoints” in human plurality. This second part is what I disagree with.
I think there are some forms of plurality where it’s not possible to insert breakpoints, such as your alters, and some forms where it is possible, such as mine, and I think the latter is not too uncommon, because I did it unknowingly in the past.