Quote:
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Originally Posted by hoyacoug
If you are saying that any group of 12 is always more correct than any individual, I say that is absurd.
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Clearly this is not absurd, but, rather, is true. 2 > 1, see? Or really, it's about combined intelligence. If you have two people with 80 IQs and one person with a mere 140:
2 * 80 > 140
Therefore the two people, taken together, are smarter. You need to further factor in the age. Essentially, intelligence must be weighted by age, since age and experience are more important than an ability to think rationally or well. So, if you take a couple of 50 year olds with 80 IQs and compare that to a 30 year old with a 140, you get:
(50 * 80) + (50 * 80) > (30 * 140)
No, when you take into account that the bretheren have relatively high IQs, let's go with 120 on average, and an average age of, what, 75?, then you also take into account that 140 IQs are rare anyway and 120 is a better number to use on the other side of the equation, you get:
(12 * 75 * 120)
> (30 * 120)
A less conservative and arguably more reasonable approach assumes that groups have a far greater influence. This is called the groupthink synergy factor. It explains that the actual group intelligence is equal to the mean IQ multiplied by the mean age and this product then raised to the power of the number of individuals in a group. Synergy! So in the case of the Q12, you get:
(75 * 120) ^ 12.
When you compare that to our "bright" individualist 30-year-old, well...
(75 * 120) ^ 12
> (30 * 120) ^ 1
And really, this makes a lot of sense. This is why all great novels are written by groups of people. This is why all great businesses have dozens of CEOs, all calling the shots unanimously. This is why any project that requires the approval of 30 or more people always turns out at least 30 times better than a project that has to meet the approval of merely one person who really knows what he's doing.
And if this wasn't all true, then why would I have bothered writing it? Further incontrovertible evidence.
Individualism delenda est.
Pax vobiscum.
o