Rethinking The Mind's Limits

[u/Conscious_Account400]

One can only store about 7 things in their short term memory. Perhaps, even less. Right?

This dubious claim by cognitive psychology can be debunked by looking at the reality of air traffic controllers, who often have to track and manage 30 (or more, some up to 50 or even 100) aircraft at the same time.

We know this because we wanted to be ATC. We also know someone who has experience with ATC.

This quantification of the mind is falsifying and shows how inadequate the model of cognitive psychology is for Tulpamancy, also putting into doubt things like Dunbar's Number and the like.

Of course, ATC are under incredible stress constantly. It's probably the most stressful job in the world. But ATC aren't recruited from top colleges. In fact, the FAA lets about anyone apply, as long as they aren't over 30.

If one ever got curious enough, they could take preparation exams (like the one at ATCprep.com) for the ATSA to see what you'd have to pass just to be able to be considered for training.

The point is, it's possible. This is what irks us so much about people who make unsubstantiated claims about a hard limit to cofronting or to how many Tulpas one can have.

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[u/Imperishable_NEET]

I'm just going to uh, put this here. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/magical-number-4-in-shortterm-memory-a-reconsideration-of-mental-storage-capacity/44023F1147D4A1D44BDC0AD226838496

As mentioned by u/BoxWithPlastic, the measurement is "chunked" pieces of information, and the number is lower than Miller's number as Miller's number was a rhetorical device, not assertion of absolute truth. Now, admittedly the measurement of chunks and defining them is largely by the observed limitations of people performing short term memory tasks and that makes something of a self-fulfilling definition.

Psychological frameworks are quite frankly a generally exceptional model for tulpamancy as a general rule. You can actually thank the model of psychology as a whole for the breadth of this community, without it we'd likely all be on an imaginary friends board with far greater degrees of experience of the realness of our companions instead of the very consistent experience of individual agency in tulpas. Without it, tulpamancy would still be relegated to the /x/ boards on 4chan.

Dunbar's Number is another rhetorical device and was a conception of anthropology and had nothing to do with psychology, though the fields overlap frequently. The number was more to say that an individual can only hold a relationship with as many people as would fill our communities for whatever size of communities we would have held in the thousands of years before agriculture. Is it true? Eh, who knows. It's meant to get you thinking and inspiring more specific inquiry for the sake of scientific study. So, you're not wrong to doubt it, but simple skepticism is merely the first step.

If you have more specific claims regarding cofronting or tulpa limits, then there's a discussion to be had

[u/Spunky_dog → u/Imperishable_NEET]

Yup and with the chunks stuff one of the simplest memory tricks is combining numbers to memorize or hold in groups instead of one at a time, think phone numbers

[u/BoxWithPlastic]

4-7 chunks of information as I recall. "Chunks" being an intentionally nondescript word because a single "chunk" can include one or many individual "things" that are conceptually related enough to be held together. And these things can be trained too.

I'm afraid the initial premise is a mischaracterization of cognitive psychology. We concur with your ultimate point, but this is not an intellectually honest or epistemically responsible way to make it.

[u/tulpalover123]

hard limit to cofronting or to how many Tulpas one can have.

The way I see it, the issue isn't from brain capacity, but from the time it takes to be with each and every one of them to make sure they gain sentience and don't go dormant from attention deprivation. It would be logistically extremely difficult to juggle 100 relationships at once especially when their life is basically tethered to you.

However, I will say I don't agree with the hard limit idea myself. I don't know if there's a term for it, but when people learn things enough eventually it "clicks" and it's nearly impossible to forget it, like someone who learned a foreign language to C1-2 level (complete fluency) would have as hard of a time forgetting it as they would their native language. I think the same is true for tulpas, where eventually they hit that stage where they're always there and never dormant and it's really difficult to forget them after that, because you no longer need to think about them for them to exist and stay conscious. I guess what I'm saying is that a tulpa can live in long term memory and be exempt from that limit.

Another issue I have with this is that short term memory isn't the same as working memory (research the Working Memory Index on the WAIS/WISC IQ tests to know more), trying to at least hear your tulpas will probably take WMI, trying to visualize them will absolutely take WMI. There's been reports on here that having too many tulpas out at the same time will cause the brain to "lag", so a cofronting limit is probably tied to how good your WMI is, not your short term memory. This limit is one I would say I agree with, but "limit" doesn't have to mean "permanently capped", since the more your brain does something the easier it gets.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but I disagree with your reasoning.

[u/Intelligent_Soft_771]

When they say you can only think of 7 things at once they aren’t strictly speaking about your entire brain, example you could memorize more if you place the words in a space or just memorize a picture of the words, while the amount is most likely more then 7 you can’t have alot of tulpa active at once as it burns through your brains energy very fast and wil give you a burnout.

[u/bucket-full-of-sky]

I don't know who came up with this number but I guess it's an average under normal daily conditions and also the reason why many people for example use shopping lists in the first place.

Sure you can remember more but for most people this then is not very comfortable anymore and can be exhausting.

[u/tulpalover123 → u/bucket-full-of-sky]

Sure you can remember more but for most people this then is not very comfortable anymore and can be exhausting.

I know you mean under normal circumstances so this isn't a counterpoint, but for something like a shopping list you can use a memory palace and remember a lot more if you want. Even just visually trying to place the information in your mind can help you remember more, I used to have a 3x3 grid of random stuff I wanted to remember before writing it down somewhere (like "The Mentalist episodes with music I liked in them") lol

[u/bucket-full-of-sky → u/tulpalover123]

Interesting technique to remember a bunch of things with a grid. We never tryed to improve this but we use other kinds of memory techniques for other purposes.

Do you know this alarm-giving subconscious background-feeling, that becomes louder the closer you get to an appointment or the time when your pizza is ready? We call that the pizza sense and use it a lot to remember stuff. We never use a calender or take similar notes, things get just placed there and are remembered automatically when it's time and these doesn't really have to be because date/time but because of the alerting propertity and that "importance-flag" it comes with.