Tulpa.info - tulpa-questions-2

It makes extra sense when you're not a singlet

If you dig inside and get rid of everything that makes you you, of course you will find nothing, because you push away the experiences that make you you

10:27 PM

It's not that you find a truth that there is nothing there, just by looking for it you make that nothingness happen

imo the experience is real and the way we think about it is flexible

mhm! i agree!

10:30 PM

But I think people are looking at it from wrong direction when they try to find who they are by introspection and looking inside

10:30 PM

you are core of yourself. you are your body. you are your thoughts. you are your impulses. you are your choices. you are your memories. you are your childhood. you are your love. you are your hate. you are your pride. you are your regrets. you are sunset warmth on your face. you are coldness of your feet. you are your likes. you are your dislikes. you are your choices. you are your successes. you are your failures. you are your mistakes. you are your talent. you are your intelligence. you are your intuition. you are your instincts. you are your work. you are your play. you are that F you got on maths. you are that A you got the other day. you are your happiness. you are your sadness. you are your expectations. you are your fear. you are your bliss. you are your worries. you are your cruelness. you are your kindness. you are your intrusive thoughts. you are your silliness. you are your seriousness. you are your cuteness. you are your grumpiness. you are your joy. you are your actions. you are your neglect. you are the music you listen to. you are the music you make. you are the art you see. you are the art you paint. you are the photon that carried a piece of star to you on that night sky. you are your struggles. you are your relationship. you are your inner critic. you are your parents' pride. you are your dancing muscles. you are your healing wound. you are your parents' mistakes they did when they raised you. you are your past self. you are your future self. you are your circle of friends. you are the people you meet. you are your flaws. you are your journey. you are your own experience of life.

1

I'm not sure I understand that copy-paste

oh it's a copy paste of what i wrote some time ago

10:33 PM

If you want to understand who you are, you shouldn't be stripping parts of you to see what's inside, you should accept that whatever you experience is what makes you you

10:33 PM

one of the things that i agree with @Unfastened Belts a lot is that disowning parts of you leads to suffering

10:34 PM

You build your sense of self by integrating your experiences, without experiences there is not much left

I gotta share stuff in this brain so I can't claim everything as me

well of course you are a tulpamancer your goal is different

10:35 PM

you are creating multiple senses of self (edited)

Yeah, we had to understand "what makes up a self?" and examine things from that perspective

Mhm! It's the experiences that you have, which is why I think headmates gain a lot from having their own experiences and opportunities to learn about themselves in different circumstances

Deleted User

one of the things that i agree with @Unfastened Belts a lot is that disowning parts of you leads to suffering

Yes, but paradoxically, we have to disown part of ourselves (the part that is obsessed with circumstance) before it becomes possible to accept the parts of us we used to disown

12:01 AM

There needs to be a dissociation from circumstance so we can connect with our unchanging "true self", the impersonal witnessing at our core. Once that connection is firmly established, integration with the body, headmates, circumstance can happen much more easily

Deleted User

one of the things that i agree with @Unfastened Belts a lot is that disowning parts of you leads to suffering

I cannot possibly disagree with this sentiment more. Disowning parts of yourself can and does lead to those parts of yourself no longer existing. Though as a caveat I would define your emotions as "not you" but rather stimuli from the body that you should accept, process, and understand, so take that however you will. But there is no part of your own identity itself that should be off-limits for scrutiny and alteration.

@Zen

Disowning parts of yourself can and does lead to those parts of yourself no longer existing.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about this, Zen. At least for my system, this definitely isn't the case. Disowning parts of yourself is a rejection of your own nature, a rejection of your past, a rejection of yourself, and fundamentally I believe it is a rejection of reality. Rather than responding to feedback, processing experiences, and integrating them through some sort of resolution, parts of yourself are ignored. In my own experience this just builds a bigger and bigger problem in the background.

But there is no part of your own identity itself that should be off-limits for scrutiny and alteration.

I agree with this, but I think rejection of parts of oneself prevents useful scrutiny and alteration. What is it that makes you think that parts of yourself that you reject no longer exist?

Simply that suggestion informs reality.

12:43 AM

I am not advocating for ignoring senses, or concrete data. I am specifically advocating rejecting not-useful ideas about yourself

12:45 AM

I should clarify, when I say disown I do not mean "acknowledge this negative thing is a part of you and then hate it." I mean "reject the premise on a base level and replace it with something that produces a better behaviour or greater contentment."

I actually, oddly, agree with both of you here.

12:48 AM

Nm, Zens clarification already accounts for that.

12:50 AM

Though I do actually disagree that emotions can not also be similarly snuffed out but... that seems to be incredibly complicated. I'd say it only applies to ones that are more of reactions and don't have lingering elements needing to be addressed.

12:51 AM

So, more like you can change your emotional reactions going by dissociating from/correcting them.

I think rejecting a part that is perceived as negative is the antithesis of processing, learning, resolution, and integration. I think the only healthy approach is to come to terms with a part, rather than reject it. Before fully understanding such a part, one may reject it for poor reasons. This is a form of ignoring feedback from reality. After fully understanding a part, rejection won't happen, but change and integration might. The only way I can see rejection being involved is if the part in question comes to a new understanding and 'rejects' some of its negative behaviours as no long necessary. But in this case it isn't the part or its past experiences that are being rejected. In fact, part of understanding why those behaviours are no longer necessary is appreciating why they came about in the first place, which seems to me to be the very opposite of rejection.

12:58 AM

The problem with rejecting non-useful ideas about ourselves is we really can't be sure if they are non-useful until we have actually processed them...

Yes, that sounds about right.

1:00 AM

I mean, or you can abandon it on a probationary basis I think and determine from how things go without it whether it served a purpose.

I don't think we actually disagree, but I literally view this as the inverse of what you're describing. Identity traits are incredibly ephemeral to my mind. Processing them makes it clear they could be viewed from any number of perspectives. Let's take something like anger issues. It does not behoove you to think of yourself as an angry person. Ever. That will only increase the stickiness of the behaviour. It clearly behooves you to unpack anger responses with reason and discern their worth, then let go of them, as you say. But that doesn't really have anything to do with how you identify your own traits though. The more you identify yourself as an angry person the more the situations will occur, whereas sincerely believing you are calm and rational will result in your mind internalizing those behaviours.

Calyra 👻

Though I do actually disagree that emotions can not also be similarly snuffed out but... that seems to be incredibly complicated. I'd say it only applies to ones that are more of reactions and don't have lingering elements needing to be addressed.

Also on this point I didn't actually mean emotions weren't manipulable. I've done it myself. Merely that emotion, while it is linked with identities, will happen in a vacuum regardless of identity though to different degrees, as if identity was an imperfect filter. (edited)

1:07 AM

Y'can't stop yourself from having anger itself. It will surface. But viewing yourself as less angry will cause you to likely be angry at less things by default, so to speak.

It clearly behooves you to unpack anger responses with reason and discern their worth, then let go of them

I don't think it always has to be let go of. Sometimes anger is an appropriate response. It's not a 'negative' emotion, but I think it can very quickly become unhealthy if it's used inappropriately. I agree that it's not a good idea to think of yourself as an angry person. However, rejecting any anger you feel out-of-hand without coming to terms with it is probably just as bad. (edited)

1:13 AM

Things like, for example, anger, always come from some sort of cause. If it's behaviour that isn't desirable, it's important to understand the causes before you can change that behaviour. I'd call that 'understanding'. I don't think we actually disagree.

To play devil's advocate there. What situation is made better with the presence of anger? To my mind it is better to process its reasons and either follow through without anger or ignore it.

Being completely consumed with anger is always bad, I think. But provided that one's ability to reason isn't compromised, anger can be a source of motivation to fix a problem. I will say, however, that fixing the actual problem should usually be done after setting the anger aside for a moment.

1:16 AM

Without feeling anger at an injustice, for example, one might not feel the impetus to fix the problem.

1:17 AM

I think anger serves an important purpose.

I view it useful as a reaction but not as a state. At a stretch I can see it being useful when trying to drive others to anger in a speech or something, but mostly it just gets in the way.

1:20 AM

Though if you want to talk about truly useless emotions. Fear's right up there.

1:20 AM

At least in its current highly neurotic human form.

Do you think anger has any use for you, or is it only useful by causing others to feel it? I disagree that fear is useless, but I fully agree that there's a lot of maladaptive fear around right now!

The only use I see for fear is maladaptive - Intimidation. The knowledge of pain already serves to keep you away from physical pain without fear. So fear in our current context is largely just an emotion that ends up butting up against our social abilities. It is the root of tribalism, and the instinct of jumping at every shadow rather than exploring it.

1:26 AM

The only use for fear is keeping you away from things which you have no knowledge of - which isn't really necessary in a post hunter-gatherer society imo. We're quite good at having knowledge of danger passed down to us.

1:31 AM

The only thing it really serves now is entertainment. Which is superfluous. I don't think I can recall a single other instance where fear has done anything other than hold me back in some way. And in legitimately dangerous situations it actually tends to make things worse because it can override reason and cause you to behave erratically.

Cerys

Being completely consumed with anger is always bad, I think. But provided that one's ability to reason isn't compromised, anger can be a source of motivation to fix a problem. I will say, however, that fixing the actual problem should usually be done after setting the anger aside for a moment.

Fun fact, people with ADHD with sometimes make themselves angry in order to focus and motivate themselves.

1

Ah. That might be why I'm so profoundly unmotivated...

1:33 AM

And yet my tupper is definitely an angrier person and is also more motivated.

The way I see it is that fear is an unpleasant feedback mechanism that protects you from something even more unpleasant, so it's adaptive. However, if you could avoid the unpleasant circumstance without needing the fear, that would be even better. Fear is useful because it's very simple. You say we are in post hunter-gatherer society, however if that society were to disappear we'd be right back to basics, and fear would be a useful ally in many circumstances. People without fear, finding themselves outside of their safe society, would not likely last long. The advantage of fear is that it works pretty well and is pretty simple. The disadvantage is that it doesn't suit some of our current living conditions. I think getting rid of fear in humans would be incredibly risky, and would risk extinction if anything went wrong.

Zen

The only use I see for fear is maladaptive - Intimidation. The knowledge of pain already serves to keep you away from physical pain without fear. So fear in our current context is largely just an emotion that ends up butting up against our social abilities. It is the root of tribalism, and the instinct of jumping at every shadow rather than exploring it.

There's a lot of things to be validly fearful of that aren't pain related. Or sometimes still are but pain won't work as a motivator. By the time you feel the pain from a bear attack, it's probably a little too late to do something about the situation

1

vixiUwU

Fun fact, people with ADHD with sometimes make themselves angry in order to focus and motivate themselves.

Oh, I didn't know that! That's interesting.

Zen

And yet my tupper is definitely an angrier person and is also more motivated.

Yuppers. That's why I'm here.

In good part

Zen

And yet my tupper is definitely an angrier person and is also more motivated.

I think this basically proves that your brain is capable of harnessing anger for its own benefit :3

The bear attack thing is exactly the kind of thing it's legit useful for but simply doesn't apply to most people. The reality is that the main use for fear in the general populace is being afraid of doing something wrong socially. Or worse, fearing people who have done something wrong socially for whatever reason. Fear is close to being functional but it could use a heck of a lot of genetic manipulation or something. (edited)

2

To be fair, I don't think we would have evolved to have any emotion if those emotions were not useful or beneficial to us in some form. Social situations are rightly feared, and doing/saying the wrong things can leave you big-time messed up, in ancient times almost as certainly dead as a bear attack might.

We offset one another nicely. I restrain his anger and he provides me with motivation. S'good stuff.

I think the big problem with fear in human societies is that it can be used as an exploit to control the behaviour of others.

@Zen actually, on the fear thing, I thought the second from this about applying a multi-agent model to an AI kind of does a good job elucidating how difficult it is to balance the "ideal" types/levels of fear: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5gfqG3Xcopscta3st/building-up-to-an-internal-family-systems-model

1:39 AM

But yeah, I'd agree most fear is useless. In large part because this is not the kind of existence we evolved to survive in, lol.

1:39 AM

And we're unfortunately pretty poorly calibrated.

Reguile

To be fair, I don't think we would have evolved to have any emotion if those emotions were not useful or beneficial to us in some form. Social situations are rightly feared, and doing/saying the wrong things can leave you big-time messed up, in ancient times almost as certainly dead as a bear attack might.

But don't the situations that are feared in social circumstances essentially arise from fear themselves? The most dangerous part of social circumstances is not doing anything specific, but being outed as being a type of person that people fear and mistrust through misinformation. We would be far less manipulable socially in ways that are wholey negative as a species without fear or with a more well calibrated version. (edited)

1:42 AM

A lack of a fear of the unknown would effectively destroy our tribalistic nature.

We would be far less manipulable socially in ways that are wholey negative as a species without fear or with a more well calibrated version.

Well put!

Zen

A lack of a fear of the unknown would effectively destroy our tribalistic nature.

I'm not so sure about this. I think our tribalistic nature is just a result of the fact that we need resources to survive, and working as a team is more likely to result in having access to those resources.

1:45 AM

I mean, if you had no fear of death then yes, your tribalistic nature would disappear.

I believe we do have types of people that should be feared, and only murky ways of dealing with them. Fear not only of being outed as one of those people, but of the person on the other end being one of those people. There is a certain level of non-trust baked into the system as a result, and barring perfect genetics of everyone born to ensure no more psychopaths and that all our values are always aligned, social-fears will be valid (edited)

That might be a stretch, I should clarify that it would end xenophobia.

1

Zen

That might be a stretch, I should clarify that it would end xenophobia.

Ah, I see! Makes sense.

The type of people we should fear are often so because they're able to successfully play on other people's fear.

And... phobia itself while we're at it

1

If it weren't fear they'd find other tricks, the social game is a big and complicated one and fear is one dimension of it

1

If we removed fear for sociopaths I wonder if they would even stay functional. Usually the reason the majority of sociopaths do not go off the deep end is quite clearly just fear.

1:48 AM

In the absence of fear they would have to use empathy.

1:48 AM

Which can be manipulated, but is less prone to causing irrational decisions.

I'd be more worried about removing fear of sociopaths, to be honest, particularly if it leads to people not paying proper attention to the risks.

They would probably be deeply dangerous, moreso than normal... but I actually think that would be a good thing...

1:49 AM

Know why?

1:49 AM

We'd exterminate the genes that cause them within a few generations.

1:49 AM

Rather than making them politicians and CEOs

Zen

We'd exterminate the genes that cause them within a few generations.

That's assuming that's possible to do. It might be that you can't eradicate it that way.

1:51 AM

The fact that they still exist seems to suggest it's not possible, or it was adaptive until recently.

If they genuinely can't function in society without all going full hannibal on us they will not likely reproduce. The traits that make sociopathy useful is manipulation and emotional distance from difficult decisions, but if they have no reason to even engage with society, will they? (edited)

We also don't know if sociopathy is it's own thing, genetically

1:52 AM

we might just not be able to remove it

Or, in the case we rid our society of them and other societies don't, our society immediately gets warred into non-existence

Reguile

Or, in the case we rid our society of them and other societies don't, our society immediately gets warred into non-existence

This, presuming the useful roles they fill aren't filled by similarly capable others.

tbh if we have the amount of speculative control over emotions that we're describing I imagine we'd probably make a regulated caste of them.

Reguile

If it weren't fear they'd find other tricks, the social game is a big and complicated one and fear is one dimension of it

Such as, what? Other than fear, the only other thing they can offer is that other folks will somehow benefit. Which isn't nothing, but it's not as strong of a primal motivator. (edited)

Lies, promises of benefit through action, righteous outrage

Manipulation to the level narcissists practice totally requires fear and negative reinforcement to work. Directing empathetic anger would likely be the next best thing, but without fear the irrational reasons for anger fall away somewhat.

Calyra 👻

Such as, what? Other than fear, the only other thing they can offer is that other folks will somehow benefit. Which isn't nothing, but it's not as strong of a primal motivator. (edited)

To be fair, even fear is a 'benefit' thing. "Do what I say and the benefit is you avoid this bad thing happening".

We naturally wouldn't presume lies would cease without fear. We'd still be capable of cognitively understanding lies without feeling paranoia about it, wouldn't we? We'd likely still lie for empathetic reasons.

2:02 AM

Anywho it's 3am so ahm sleep now.

1

Goodnight Zen :3

Speaking of anger, I have a bit of ADD and sometimes I do that to get hyperfocused

Yep, understandible! It's a lot of what we did before getting diagnosed and medicated, and still somewhat, at times.

I wasn't able to get the help I kind of needed growing up, so I kind of had to figure out how to deal with it myself