In the same way that Google indexing the web radically transformed the way we engage with knowledge and information, indexing your mind will change the world in similar—if not even more profound—ways.

It's too early to predict many of the ways in which this will manifest, but I would like to briefly explore one of them that is particularly interesting to me: how we communicate and understand others.

When we get to know someone, we are—effectively—building a model of them inside our heads. Over time, not only can we recall their preferences and experiences with ease, but we can also use our mental model of them to extrapolate—to make assumptions about how they might react to something, what sorts of things they might like or don't like. We do this when we buy our friends gifts, or plan someone a surprise. We are trusting the ability of our mental model to predict their behaviors.

It is generally true that the longer you have known someone, and the more time you have spent with them, the more aligned with reality your model of them will be. This is why, when we are communicating with a close friend, we can use fewer words than when we are communicating with a stranger. But we can't necessarily use the same shibboleths, shortcuts, and coded language with one close friend as with another; each relationship is unique. We can communicate more effectively and efficiently because—based on the model we have of them in our heads—we are fine-tuning our communication style to best engage with them.

I would argue that at its core, this is an expression of empathy. It's a result of being able to really, truly see someone and to engage with them wholly.

We do this intuitively; it's part of being human. Indeed, it would be impossible to write down in words all the context you carry about a close friend—but it is data that your brain is synthesizing every time you speak to them.

And if it's data, it can be digitized.

Imagine a world where you didn't have to invest years to develop that context—where you could get 90% of the way there in minutes. How much more rich might your interactions be? What new kinds of serendipity would you discover? How much more could we help each other grow?

I don't want to spend too much time theorizing what this might actually look like. At its core it could simply be a shared list of uncommon things that you have in common with someone else—but it could also take the role of facilitated conversation, directed experience, or something else.

The main point I want to make is that today we are in the dark ages of knowing ourselves, and therefore we are in the dark ages of knowing one another. Nowhere does there exist a dense, structured dataset of all the things that make us who we are. Some of us might use things like our Myers-Briggs type or our astrological signs as a shorthand when presenting ourselves to others—but those things do not even remotely compare to the millions of data points that YouAi will index about ourselves and make available for us to share with others, if we choose.

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