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Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

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Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#71

Post by Eelongate »

codezero wrote: post #69
Eelongate wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> day dreaming to play out various scenarios like a decision tree to “workshop” how to interact with specific people Seems like a reinvention of empathy.

Curious how you see it that way. I am a pretty empathetic person (maybe less so to strangers than friends), but I have limited (mostly by choice) filters, so sometimes I just want to make sure I’m not going to accidentally cross any boundaries. I think of it more like rehearsing lines for a play, but making tweaks to fit the intended scene.

To me, empathy is about trying to understand the way other people think or feel so you can anticipate how they might respond to things. In forming mental models of other people and running through simulated scenarios with those mental models to explore possible outcomes, I think you're engaging in a form of empathy.

> I am a pretty empathetic person (maybe less so to strangers than friends),

I feel the same, strongly so in fact. I think the accuracy of the mental models used for empathizing depends on experience; experience with that specific person and one's own life experiences in general. The better I know a person, the more accurate my mental model of their behavior and feelings will be. General experience socializing with other people also enhances empathy since that experience enables somebody to create more accurate models of how people in general think or feel about things. Further, personal experiences allow somebody to better empathize with people who have similar experiences.

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#72

Post by ineedasername »

nradov wrote: post #61
vsareto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m thinking being able to replay worlds or map geometry like your brain is rendering it live is more rare and maybe this is teaching it a bit. No one’s ever quizzed me on how many details (big and small) I could get right though.

I used to play so much Tetris that after a while I could just close my eyes and play without a computer. From talking to other frequent players this was not uncommon.

And good chess players don't need a board either.

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#73

Post by ineedasername »

bencollier49 wrote: post #12

Interesting how occult concepts like astral travel (reality shifting) and familiars & daemons (tulpamancy) are getting recycled without the Victorian baggage.

Except now they're picking up pseudo scientific baggage. I'm not sure there's a net gain in that.

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#74

Post by ineedasername »

Alan_Dillman wrote: post #66

Is it really anything new, or just newly noticed by these select researchers? I used to meditate/imagine natural environments in the 1980s and while in them, I'd move my perception through, looking for entities to talk to. I didn't know the term tulpa, but the notion of a spirit guide or totem is similar enough. It was better than full on dreaming, but wasn't lucid dreaming either. Some of my friends had the shared w…

My assumption was that the "new" thing were the sort of grass roots social communities and formalization of it all that the researchers stumbled upon. And maybe they're taking it too much as a new thing rather than just a social crystalization around a common thing that lots of people do (deep daydreaming)

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#75

Post by ineedasername »

Flankk wrote: post #5

Gen Z is using TikTok to teleport to Hogwarts? Is this parody?

We're in a 2021 mid-COVID civilization. A digital currency based on a dog meme has a market cap of $billions. A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage.

We might have been on track anyway, but shit got crazy when 2020 took us down a sharp turn and dark alley towards a mashup of all of the dystopian fiction ever written.

Kids thinking they're astral projecting to Hogwarts is downright rational. That world had only a vague internal consistency and it still makes more sense than actual reality right now.

It's the equivalent of meteorologists finding themselves in the middle of a Sharknado and deciding that, hey, maybe getting weather from a groundhog wasn't so crazy because a few more/less weeks of winter was an understandable possibility, and Punxsutawney Phil never predicted weather of biblical proportions.

It's not parody, it's a coping mechanism because reality right now looks itself like a bad parody written by an SF hack in 2017.

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#76

Post by [deleted] »

ineedasername wrote: post #75
Flankk wrote: post #5

Gen Z is using TikTok to teleport to Hogwarts? Is this parody?

We're in a 2021 mid-COVID civilization. A digital currency based on a dog meme has a market cap of $billions. A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage. We might have been on track anyway, but shit got crazy when 2020 took us down a sharp turn and dark alley towards a mashup of all of the dystopian fiction ever written. Kids thinking…

[deleted]

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#77

Post by mensetmanusman »

Eelongate wrote: post #43
smoldesu wrote: post #11

Interesting to see them mention tulpas here. It's always been a bit of a meme online, but I knew a pretty tenured hypnotist who was utterly terrified of the things. He'd seen tulpas cause irreversible psychological damage to the people who adopted them, where many people would become completely attached to a character or particular fiction in their head. This could cause them to act out involuntarily, induce constant…

I lost one of my friends to the tulpa crap a few years ago. It's self-induced schizophrenia and it ruined his life. He lost his job, all of his friends, and last I heard was living on the street.

Schizophrenia is more common than people think. Happened to a family member but medication calmed the voices and they are steady now. I wonder what it takes for people to accept they are not well though…

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#78

Post by recuter »

ineedasername wrote: post #75
Flankk wrote: post #5

Gen Z is using TikTok to teleport to Hogwarts? Is this parody?

We're in a 2021 mid-COVID civilization. A digital currency based on a dog meme has a market cap of $billions. A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage. We might have been on track anyway, but shit got crazy when 2020 took us down a sharp turn and dark alley towards a mashup of all of the dystopian fiction ever written. Kids thinking…

1634 Dodge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

And they weren't even goosing fake market cap bits at the time.

> A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage.

Ever hear of actual breadlines?

This guy thought he was a chicken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtLL3LOi87I

I think you might as well daydream yourself into a reality where the sky isn't falling. ;)

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#79

Post by ineedasername »

recuter wrote: post #78
ineedasername wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in a 2021 mid-COVID civilization. A digital currency based on a dog meme has a market cap of $billions. A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage. We might have been on track anyway, but shit got crazy when 2020 took us down a sharp turn and dark alley towards a mashup of all of the dystopian fiction ever written. Kids thinking…

1634 Dodge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania And they weren't even goosing fake market cap bits at the time. > A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage. Ever hear of actual breadlines? This guy thought he was a chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtLL3LOi87I I think you might as well daydream yourself into a reality wh…

I'm not sure what your trying to say. I have heard of breadlines and also the toilet paper shortage (in the US) in the 70s. I picked a couple of examples ready to mind, but there's countless more right now that form a constellation of points that eclipse any single phenomena taken from history.

Note that I'm also note saying things are worse right now than other times.

I'm saying things are stranger, weirder than other times, less predictable from 3 years earlier, as a civilization, than at other times of high chaos.

Re: Reality shifting: an emergent online daydreaming culture

#80

Post by recuter »

ineedasername wrote: post #79
recuter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1634 Dodge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania And they weren't even goosing fake market cap bits at the time. > A hint of bad news will empty store shelves of toilet paper. A chip shortage is in some loose way related to a turkey shortage. Ever hear of actual breadlines? This guy thought he was a chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtLL3LOi87I I think you might as well daydream yourself into a reality wh…

I'm not sure what your trying to say. I have heard of breadlines and also the toilet paper shortage (in the US) in the 70s. I picked a couple of examples ready to mind, but there's countless more right now that form a constellation of points that eclipse any single phenomena taken from history. Note that I'm also note saying things are worse right now than other times. I'm saying things are stranger, weirder than oth…

There have always been flat earthers. The internet lets the freaks meet and tell each other that they are normal. Now the algorithm fuels it and the media amplifies it. And yet the earth is still not flat, and somehow, still spins.

Things are not stranger now, you just hear more about the strange people and unusual things.

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