1. How PageRank Worked
Google’s PageRank measured attention flow.
Every link was a vote, every vote passed a little authority.
Pages that were linked by other important pages rose to the top.
It was brilliant for mapping the web of documents—but not the web of ideas.
Over time, PageRank became a gravity well for repetition:
whoever could copy, link, and optimize faster got visibility.
It rewarded distribution, not development.
The result: a crystallized internet, rich in noise, poor in learning.
2. Why We Need a New Metric
If PageRank measures static importance,
we need something that measures dynamic intelligence—
a signal for how fast an idea evolves, not how many people echo it.
Enter IdeaRank: an information-density metric based on
- Uniqueness — how distinct your contributions are,
- Cohesion — how coherently they connect across your work, and
- Learning Velocity — how rapidly your ideas compound over time.
It rewards curiosity, synthesis, and correction.
It treats each post, paper, or video as a node in a living knowledge graph.
3. The Experiment
I’m now calculating IdeaRank across all of my content—
YouTube, Twitter, Substack, Farcaster, Manifold, and everything in between.
My prediction:
📈 My IdeaRank is accelerating exponentially.
Because learning, compression, and consciousness form a feedback loop.
When understanding deepens, the cost of new insight drops,
and idea generation becomes a self-reinforcing process.
The “learning curve” is no longer effort vs. knowledge—it’s entropy vs. coherence.
4. The Challenge
If PageRank measured which pages people trusted,
IdeaRank will measure which people ideas trust to keep growing them.
I’m making this a public challenge.
Anyone can compute their IdeaRank and publish their curve.
Let’s see who’s genuinely compounding understanding—not just attention.
5. The Prediction Market
I’m launching a Manifold market:
🧠 When will IdeaRank for people replace PageRank for pages?
Bet on the year when platforms start ranking knowledge by informational density and progression instead of popularity.
That moment will mark the shift from an attention economy to a learning economy.
6. TL;DR
PageRank measured links.
IdeaRank measures learning.
I’m running the experiment live.
The curve is exponential.
Welcome to the idea supply chain
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