theorem on groups and their relative intelligence

[plural]

pondering this
a while
and well it
came up today
so
I thought
I would
scribble something here

I believe
that groups inherently
detract from the individual intelligence
of those who comprise that group.

for example

a soccer fan may be intelligent
but a stadium full of soccer fans
would lose to a pile of rocks
in the brains dept.
(don't get me started on football fans)

the difficulty for me
is determining the exact ratio of loss

it is obvious that
in sufficiently large groups
intelligence is reduce to zero
hence
the colloquial use of
"President Bush"

I would
propose the following
formula for determining group intelligence

average the IQ scores of the people in the group
and subtract 1 point of IQ from the average for
each member of the group

for our purposes we define a group
as three or more people

Comments

[strike-anywhere.livejournal.com]

how remarkably un-democratic of you...

there are some who believe that decisions made by groups (ie a diet of some sort) are far more 'intellegent' than those made by a single dictator.

If we view a committee decision as a sort of 'average' of the ideas of those present, we can 'apply' the well known statistical result that says (essentially) this 'average' will be unbiased (that is equally over and under, and in the long run, you will hit it more often) for the true decision that the group wants, and the variation of of this 'estimate' of group's mind, will decrease by at least (depending upon the level of independence) a factor of 1/sqrt(n).

The point: committes actually should arrive at decisions to fit the group's mind better than a single dictator.

Now, your obersvation begs the question: what is the 'group mind' of a stadium of soccer fans?

[plural.livejournal.com]

you make an excellent point as always
the group mind can
often help make less biased decisions
than a single individual as the weighting
of one persons bias is diluted

with regard to soccer or sports
fans in general, they seem
prone when in large groups
to act as a mindless mob

as is shown by
fatal incidents and riots
over the past few years.

and you are right, I
do not believe in democracy
never have really.
but as you will see
I will address that
in my next post

I have noticed..

[zaiah.livejournal.com]

NO ONE uses the term "President Bush" simply the "Bush Administration". I wonder how much of that is the subconscious choice of the media to be truthful that he's not the one in charge?

Also excluded from use in the world broadcasts I've listened to "President of the United States" to the "United State's Bush Administration"

Re: I have noticed..

[ex-tanstaafl888.livejournal.com]

which president in modern times (or any time for that matter) actually WAS in charge of anything?

Re: I have noticed.. amended

[ex-tanstaafl888.livejournal.com]

Realize, of course, that ll the presidents thus far have been married... and.. like Hillary did... the wives have had good control over their puppets.