Are some intellectual environments better than others? Yes.

\text{E} = \text{T} / \text{A}!

ETA! states that E, the evolution time of ideas, is the time T needed to test alterations of ideas, divided by the factorial of the number of ideas in the Assembly Pool A!.

Longer evolution times means worse ideas last longer before evolving into better ideas.

\text{EvolutionTime}(\text{Ideas}) = \text{TimeToTest}(\text{Ideas'}) / \text{AssemblyPool}!

You can lengthen the lifespan of bad ideas by increasing the time to test alterations or reducing the size of the Assembly Pool.

You can evolve good ideas faster by decreasing the time to test alterations and increasing the size of the Assembly Pool.

The number of test threads is proportional to the size of the Assembly Pool.

This equation explains the triumph of open source and public domain software.

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Notes

An implication of this equation: copyrights, patents, licenses and NDAs retard evolution. Thus, people that use these things are accurately called retarded. They evolve slower and will go extinct.
After feedback from Szymon Łukaszyk it became clear to me the more precise formula is:

\sum_{A=0}^{A} A^A

Luckily A^A is still in the factorial class so the memorable acronym still applies.

Thank you to Lee Cronin and Sara Walker for evolving the idea of the Assembly Pool.
Thank you to Szymon Łukaszyk who's applications of Assembly Theory to binary messages encouraged me to apply Assembly Theory to measure the health of information environments.
Thank you to Connor McCormick for superb feedback.
Thank you to Cobe Liu for pointing out it should be T/A!.
Thank you to my coauthor John. Without your help I never would have arrived at this equation.

ETA!: A Measure of Evolution

Notes