Psychedelic-information-theory-Shamanism-in-the-age-of-Reason

Chapter 22Information Genesisand ComplexityThe emergence of new information over time was the obsession ofpsychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna, and he popularized theterm Novelty Theory to describe the phenomenon of increasinginformation complexity in the universe through time. In order to graphthe emergence of novelty through time, McKenna created an occultformula based on the hexagrams of the I Ching, and charted a jaggedline that starts at zero and tops out at infinity; what he called TimewaveZero. McKenna’s observation that novelty appeared to be speeding upled him to believe that time was approaching a singularity where allinformation tops out at infinity, set to occur on December 12, 2012. 1McKenna’s observations about novelty speeding up were essentiallycorrect, and many people have adopted McKenna’s 2012 meme, but theconstruction of McKenna’s Timewave and other aspects of his 2012prophecy have left many unconvinced.Psychedelic Information Theory approaches novelty andinformation genesis from a different perspective than McKenna.McKenna viewed novelty as a trend line that begins with the start of theuniverse and speeds forward from zero until infinity, which is accuratebut is also misleading at the same time. McKenna also does notdifferentiate between types of information and the contexts in whichnew information emerges; this is also a problem. By blending allinformation together into a single trend line it would appear thatnovelty is speeding up and will soon top out at infinity, but this trendline flattens out if you consider that information exists in various states,