Non-linear communication

I've been thinking about that linearisation idea I wrote about a while back. For whatever reason, it seems like our brains don't natively think in coherent, linear sequences. We can believe things that are totally incoherent until we try to verbalise them. We can mistakenly think we understand something but realise we have no idea when we try to explain it. We can solve problems by describing them to an inanimate object that we can't figure out just by thinking.

Most of what I wrote before was about the usefulness of linearising, but what about the opposite: deliberately staying non-linear? There are certain things that are much easier to do in that non-linear, non-verbal space. Because things don't have to make sense, your thoughts are free to wander and associate, often yielding surprising and creative ideas. They appear to come from nowhere, but in reality they just came from somewhere you can't linearise the path back to. It seems useful to cultivate non-linear thinking as well.

Beyond its usefulness as a thinking tool, non-linear experiences can be quite compelling. Dreams, for example, are totally incoherent experiences that you can't explain to anyone else, but they are very compelling at the time. Even awake, you sometimes find yourself in a particular frame of mind that can't really be conveyed well. You're looking out at a city at night and anything seems possible. You finish binge-reading a book and the real world's colours look different. All your worries get together and summon you to a meeting, talking over each other to make sure they get heard.

These things are hard to put into words because they're a grab-bag of disconnected thoughts and feelings, non-linear by nature. But instead of trying to marshall them into some order, could we instead find some way to communicate them in their native form? I don't know exactly what this would look like. Sounds? Shapes? Words? Direct electrical stimulation? It's not clear. But the nice thing is that there is a simple test: just transmit information to someone else that they understand, but falls apart when they try to explain it.

A non-linear communication system's ultimate goal is to share a dream.