[munificent]

    > Having external thinking tools is a big deal. Modern
    > ‘human intelligence’ relies a lot on things like writing
    > and collected data, that aren’t in anyone’s brain.

Here's a way to think about it. Imagine human progress as the amplitude of a wave. That wave oscillates forward through time by being passed on from one person to the next. Each person can add their tiny nudge to the wave when it reaches them, increasing its amplitude a little. Over time, that resonance means the wave grows and grows.

But before language, writing, drawing, etc. every time the wave passed from one human to the next, some of the amplitude was lost. In other words, the wave was damped. It doesn't take much damping for the wave to never grow beyond a certain amplitude.

Each new communication technology increases the efficiency that we can pass knowledge from one person to the next and reduces that damping friction. Even a tiny improvement here compounds exponentially as the wave resonates through time.

Now, with the Internet, we've made it incredibly easy to preserve and share information. I think the next advance for us is going to be dealing with the fact that we've made it equally easy to share things that aren't true or helpful. Worse, many of those unfacts prey on our cognitive biases and are more appealing and frequently shared.

[dwaltrip]

It seems that the nudge from each individual can either contribute to the resonance or detract (constructive vs destructive interference).

There are many ways this can unfold. For example, groups of people with similar values, mindsets, or skills can much more easily manifest significant constructive interference.

As you note, the speed/frequency of the wave seems much faster now with our new communication technologies. These changes, along with the increased scale of human population, introduce new patterns for both constructive and destructive interference that we need to understand and handle.

Of course, if we try to solidify the metaphor further... this wave is likely to have enormous dimensionality and be composed of components that would absurdly difficult to even begin measuring. But it's a great metaphor and certainly got me thinking.