Towards an Ideometrics-Based General Theory of Human Progress
This paper proposes ideometrics as the foundation for a generalised and potentially testable theory of human progress and civilisational progress, thus linking ideometrics to studies in economics and history. Building on prior work that conceptualises the human brain as a sensor of ideas, human progress is understood not primarily through outcomes such as wealth, health, or technological advancement, but through the dynamic process of the "idea life cycle" that shapes future states. The paper advances a formal definition of human progress as a measurable improvement in the ability of individuals and societies to generate, evaluate, prioritise, and implement ideas in a way that increasingly aligns prioritised ideas with those that truly lead to preferred future states, given available information and uncertainty, and under scarcity of human capacity, energy, time and resources. It introduces the Ideometric Index of Human Progress (IIHP) that captures the quality of idea generation (G), accuracy of their evaluation (E), efficiency of their prioritisation (P), and effectiveness of their implementation (Ie). It shows that the future progress will be realised if there is good alignment between the perceived future value of ideas and their true, realised future value, assessed as outcome monitoring (O). This formulation shifts the analytical focus from static outcomes to the quality of evaluating ideas, thereby offering a novel lens for understanding progress and regress. The concept can also be extended to long periods of history through the Ideometric Index of Civilisational Progress (IICP), where additional parameters of successful documentation of outcomes (D) and successful intergenerational transmission of gathered knowledge (T) are added. By transforming ideas into measurable units of analysis, ideometrics offers a potentially transformative approach to understanding human progress.