The link between fractals and psychodelia

[Weber]

As most of you probably know, most fractal art especially those found on posters are considered "trippy".  I had quite a few such posters on my walls back in the early 90's and myself and friends would get lost in them.  So how do you think this relationship between the two has been formed?  Have you ever tripped on acid and see similarities between fractals and the acid world? 

Now that the questions are out of the way,  I will admit that yes I experimented with LSD and other hallucinogens back then and yes there are remarkable similarities.  I would close my eyes while tripping and envision some of the very same types of morphing found on a lot of 3d fractal videos.  In completely dark black rooms colors and shapes would create a virtual scene or video that would transport me to another realm.  Strangely i get the same basic feeling while watching fractal morphs. 

So please share your ideas on the relationship and if you wish, even your personal experiences with such drugs if any.

[fractower]

Large body and brain size creates an interesting problem for biology. The sensory organs send signals to to brain, the brain has to process the data, then send signals to the body to respond. All these signals travel quite fast http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10921/, but not fast enough for the competitive world of eat or be eaten. The solution that nature chose was to build a model of the world in the brain and use this model to predict the future. So instead of living in the now, we are actually living in a model of the world that has been fast forwarded half a second into the future. This can be demonstrated with optical illusions without recreational pharmaceuticals http://www.livescience.com/4950-key-optical-illusions-discovered.htm.

There is a feed back in the system. Rather than clean boot the model from moment to moment, the model merges previous predictions with new sensory input to create the next prediction. Stated another way, our brains iterate to create our perception of the world.

Warning. At this point I am wandering off into speculation. Iteration with feedback often leads to instability, so our brains probably have lots of processes dedicated to keeping the model stable. I suspect that some of the visuals from LSD or shrooms comes from an inhibition of the feedback controls in the visual system. This would likely be enhanced when external sensory inputs are minimized... With the possible exception of some King Crimson played really loud. 

[Weber]

Ya know I didn't quite understand a lot of what you were saying, but I do get the gist of it.  I never thought of living in the future as you put it.  I always assumed that we are living in the now and any interference we may receive in our thought processes would be viewed as hallucinations, or otherwise a distortion of thought and perception which would only affect the "now".

[cKleinhuis]

this thread has been locked, please share your drug experiences elsewhere, additionally we will include "talking about drugs" in our board rules and guidelines, that this is a forum without an adult section, and this topic would definately go in there, so please understand that we need to intervene here!