As part of my research into AGI, which I believe hinges upon conscious reasoning and therefore conscious experience, I’ve read extensively about “Tulpas”, and i

As part of my research into AGI, which I believe hinges upon conscious reasoning and therefore conscious experience, I’ve read extensively about “Tulpas”, and interviewed a few people on a Tulpa discord. First thing — this phenomena is predicted by the Attention-Schema theory of consciousness, which explicitly postulates that our brains generate not only our own consciousness, but also generate and attribute consciousness to external entities (whether people, animals, or as humans often do, inanimate objects whose activity seems deliberate). Second thing — this phenomena has many analogues in other realms of human experience. Writers, particularly Stephen King, speak of how they let their characters do what their characters want to do, as if those characters have taken on agency in the writer’s own mind. There’s also the well known mental disorders of schizophrenia and dissociated identify disorder (formerly called multiple personalities). To the person experiencing a Tulpa, it is a feeling of having a sentient other inside your mind, with a mind of its own. They aren’t “parroting” imaginary friends, putting words into the Tulpa’’s mouth like a ventriloquist. Last thing — Tulpas seem to have access to all a person’s memories and to be incapable of having their own separate ones. They do not seem to run as a “parallel” process. Moreover, practitioners often talk of “switching” who is “fronting”, i.e., of which consciousness is guiding concrete behavior of the body. In short, this phenomena is real, and it is a fascinating topic for those interested in how the brain generates consciousness. Our brains seem hardwired to generate and attribute consciousness to not only ourselves, but to others. This “Theory of Mind”’ isn’t so controversial. What is more controversial is the claim of AST and the Tulpas, that these generated consciousnesses are just as real as the one we experience. In other words, Frodo really is alive, even if only Tolkien spent enough time with him to develop into a short-term consciousness. It won’t be long until we do the same with machines, and then GPT-3 is going to look laughably dumb.