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

Chapter 09What is NonlinearHallucination?Psychedelic Information Theory invokes nonlinearity to describethe perceptual effects of hallucination, but the term nonlinear has avariety of definitions which are sometimes confusing or unclear. Toclarify the nonlinearity of psychedelic hallucination the following is adescription of nonlinear dynamics and how they apply to psychedelicperception.Nonlinear SystemsNonlinear systems can be defined in terms of the complexity ofoutput in proportion to input, also described in terms of sensitivity toinitial conditions. The output of changes in a linear system are simpleand can be modeled with a line on a graph. In contrast the results of anonlinear system are chaotic and complex, and simple small changes ininitial conditions will result in unpredictable and divergent data setsthat cannot be easily predicted. In mathematical terms, the results of anonlinear system begin to bifurcate, diverge, or split into multiplepossible data points the farther out you attempt to resolve them. Theresults of a nonlinear system cannot be modeled with a linear functionbecause linear functions plot sequential or additive complexity;nonlinear functions plot exponential or geometrically expandingcomplexity. The mathematical study of nonlinear systems has resultedin chaos theory, complexity theory, and the analysis of self-similarrecursive systems such as fractals and cellular automata. Renderings ofnonlinear output are considered to be of high intrinsic beauty, (Fig. 14) 1and the repeating forms and patterns are perceived as spiritual or