Hi Emrik, I wanted to flag the outside view is that stopping all communication with other people seems like a very bad idea. If I understand right from your link, Maria is a spirit-animal rather than another person in the usual sense of the word.
My best guess is that isolation will not improve your ability to help others, but will create a complete echo chamber that won’t be good for your wellbeing or your ability to help others.
(I think there can be some variations on this that make sense. Like I have a family member who can only write science fiction when he’s been away from people for several days, so for a long time he structured his life to be pretty isolated in order to write books. But he was still in touch with friends and family at intervals.)
It sounds like you’re in a difficult place, and I really hope you’re able to find other people you trust to help you work out how you want to approach things. [Edited a bit since I think my tone was off, thanks quila for identifying some of that]
I predict this comment would lead to, in the one it’s replying to, feeling misunderstood. This mostly comes from imagining how I would feel.
To me, this comment reads like it’s written to be convincing or agreeable or norm-affirming to other EA forum readers, but not intended to truly help Emrik.* (Note: I can’t know your inner intent, so this is only a description of how it seems to me.)
*In case it’s not clear why I would form that perception, it might be helpful for me to try to point to some examples of elements in your reply that contribute to it seeming this way to me. If so, I should first explain why pointing to examples is partially fraught, though.
When reading your reply, I didn’t update towards what I wrote at the start only upon observing each specific example. My perception comes from the text as a whole, smaller-scale examples are just the only way I know to try to communicate about this.
(Had some other caveats, but I think they simplify into the above)
Okay, the examples:
If I understand right from your link, “Maria” is a “spirit-animal”
This is technically true: Emrik’s link describes their tulpa as having a spirit-animal identity. But for an average reader, who hasn’t checked the link (and so doesn’t know this refers to a tulpa), and who probably also doesn’t know what a tulpa is, they just see that Emrik believes they can talk to a spirit animal named Maria. This probably connotes something not physically possible (e.g., an ghost-like animal-shaped entity, like those in art, by one’s side in the physical world). This could cause readers to negatively update on Emrik’s epistemics or possibly sanity.
edit: after reading Emrik’s linked post, I think this is more nuanced than what I wrote above, because in a sense it would be true to say they believe there’s a spirit being with them. They do describe intentionally believing with part of their mind that there is a Maria present, but they’re aware they’re doing this. This is described in the section, “Self-fulfilling fixed-point beliefs”. I think it was a mistake by me to imply ‘tulpa’ is somehow ontologically separate from techniques like these. The relevant distinction is instead something like, ‘partial and intentional’ vs ‘full and unintentional’ beliefs.
I wanted to flag the outside view [...]
I don’t think this would be present if the response were meant to help develop Emrik’s inside view.
If I were in Emrik’s position, I would find it most helpful for others engage with me by trying to understand why I believe what I wrote, and either discussing that, or telling me about unrelated reasons it’s bad that are applicable to my mind and that I’m probably not aware of. For the latter, it would be best if there were some back-and-forth so the other person can develop an understanding of which of their reasons could be applicable to my mind (because there is a lot of diversity between minds).
Hi Emrik,
I wanted to flag the outside view is that stopping all communication with other people seems like a very bad idea. If I understand right from your link, Maria is a spirit-animal rather than another person in the usual sense of the word.
My best guess is that isolation will not improve your ability to help others, but will create a complete echo chamber that won’t be good for your wellbeing or your ability to help others.
(I think there can be some variations on this that make sense. Like I have a family member who can only write science fiction when he’s been away from people for several days, so for a long time he structured his life to be pretty isolated in order to write books. But he was still in touch with friends and family at intervals.)
It sounds like you’re in a difficult place, and I really hope you’re able to find other people you trust to help you work out how you want to approach things.
[Edited a bit since I think my tone was off, thanks quila for identifying some of that]
I predict this comment would lead to, in the one it’s replying to, feeling misunderstood. This mostly comes from imagining how I would feel.
To me, this comment reads like it’s written to be convincing or agreeable or norm-affirming to other EA forum readers, but not intended to truly help Emrik.*
(Note: I can’t know your inner intent, so this is only a description of how it seems to me.)
*In case it’s not clear why I would form that perception, it might be helpful for me to try to point to some examples of elements in your reply that contribute to it seeming this way to me. If so, I should first explain why pointing to examples is partially fraught, though.
When reading your reply, I didn’t update towards what I wrote at the start only upon observing each specific example. My perception comes from the text as a whole, smaller-scale examples are just the only way I know to try to communicate about this.
(Had some other caveats, but I think they simplify into the above)
Okay, the examples:
This is technically true: Emrik’s link describes their tulpa as having a spirit-animal identity. But for an average reader, who hasn’t checked the link (and so doesn’t know this refers to a tulpa), and who probably also doesn’t know what a tulpa is, they just see that Emrik believes they can talk to a spirit animal named Maria. This probably connotes something not physically possible (e.g., an ghost-like animal-shaped entity, like those in art, by one’s side in the physical world). This could cause readers to negatively update on Emrik’s epistemics or possibly sanity.
edit: after reading Emrik’s linked post, I think this is more nuanced than what I wrote above, because in a sense it would be true to say they believe there’s a spirit being with them. They do describe intentionally believing with part of their mind that there is a Maria present, but they’re aware they’re doing this. This is described in the section, “Self-fulfilling fixed-point beliefs”. I think it was a mistake by me to imply ‘tulpa’ is somehow ontologically separate from techniques like these. The relevant distinction is instead something like, ‘partial and intentional’ vs ‘full and unintentional’ beliefs.
I don’t think this would be present if the response were meant to help develop Emrik’s inside view.
If I were in Emrik’s position, I would find it most helpful for others engage with me by trying to understand why I believe what I wrote, and either discussing that, or telling me about unrelated reasons it’s bad that are applicable to my mind and that I’m probably not aware of. For the latter, it would be best if there were some back-and-forth so the other person can develop an understanding of which of their reasons could be applicable to my mind (because there is a lot of diversity between minds).
Also, you’re always welcome at the EA peer support group.