[alganet]

People wanting magic to be real is the hook.

My guess is that the whole thing is made to work on a single word, either to promote it, hide it or change its meaning over time.

It has autonomous defenses (the creator(s) could claim it as a joke or misunderstanding), it has propagating parallell beliefs (the "typing" tulpa as an analog for muscular memory), etc. You acted to defend it using one of its autonomous mechanisms, unwillingly perhaps (it preys on the inability of some to perceive its parts as distinct pieces, you only saw the new age stuff outside).

It seems highly engineered, but not sophisticated enough to be completely invisible.

[turtleyacht]

Is it like the astral doppleganger? There's a whole chapter and six levels before that idea:

The Psychonaut Field Manual - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42563946 - 3 months ago (70 points, 61 comments)

i.e. the need to prepare, and the first step in level seven is circle of protection.

[alganet]

I don't know, I never read that manual. Not particularly curious to do so.

I am talking about autonomous cultural mechanisms. I cannot correlate it with works from another author.

The "dillution by correlation" is also a kind of autonomous cultural mechanism that preys on the human proneness to identify patterns. These manuals for training seem to good to be true, and if they are, too obvious to remain effective.

[turtleyacht]

"Autonomous cultural mechanism" sounds like it should belong in a biology of memetics, or mind-viruses. It's unique enough that you could have coined it.

Problem is innoculation is impossible; only active "treatment" is like repeating a series of phrases or something. Reasoning through a series of affirmations.

[alganet]

That's one way of seeing it, I guess.

"virus" implies something harmful, a disease. I refrain from borrowing that term because, as I said, I don't know if it merits being associated with something bad.

Since we are here on a techie forum, I could have used a term like "cobtinously self-applying cultural diff patch". Got it?

What it really reminds me of is the story about the East India Company and the tulip selling rise, crisis and subsequent crash.

But that's because I thought too much about words and was "hit in the head" with a lot of wordplay that made me create a box inside my head that looks at language and history in a weird way.

These ideas about cultural diseases, treatments, biology comparisons... to me, sound dumb. Like if someone watched too many movies and is trying too hard to be funny. This is not for me, it goes on the weird box.

It seems people like the weird box stuff. Maybe I should charge very high prices for it. You know what? Let's make it so. Tapping into my weird head box incurs terrible cultural charges that must be payed.

[Rzor]

A noteworthy aside on that is the author of that "manual" suffered a mental breakdown. Just search for it adding "reddit" on Google and you'll find the post.

[turtleyacht]

Thank-you. Haven't heard anything new so far. Hope they are doing okay.