Sundar's Law of Collective IQ's

Ever wonder why a group of smart individuals behave in a way that is abnormal for their individual IQ? 

Ever wonder why bigger the gathering, more difficult to come to conclusions faster?

Ever been in a meeting with folks who are the "who's who" in their field and not be able to agree on anything?

Why can't a husband and wife agree on the best way to change a diaper?

Stop wondering!

Sundar's law uses empirical evidence to come to this fundamental conclusion "The collective IQ of a group of people is reduced by the variation in the individual IQ's" and as is customary with most laws, this one gets an equation:

Collective IQ = Average of Individual IQ's in a group - (Range of the Individual's IQ/2)

Let's try out a few examples. Say my for example a husband's IQ is 135 and wife's IQ is 145. Left to them as individuals they might change a diaper okay. Put them together and the formula gives us

Collective IQ = (135+145)/2 - (145-135)/2 = 135!  The advantage of a person's higher IQ is gone! Now we have no good way to change a diaper.

Lets take a group meeting where there are 5 guys with IQ's ranging from 100 to 180.. say 100, 120,140,160,180.. 

Collective IQ = 700/5 - 80/2 = 100. No consensus. 

Last but not least, take a street protest with a hundred guys with IQ's ranging from 50 to 150. The Average IQ of a crowd might be a 100. Given most IQ is within 2 Standard Deviaitons and 98% of folks have IQ between 70 and 130, it is not a bad starting point for this hypothetical. 

Collective IQ = 100-100/2 = 50.. So the bigger the crowd and more the IQ spread, closer they are to idiots as a collective. 

Have always wanted to have a Law named after me... I am definitely hoping this Law catches on simply by word of mouth and brings me fame!

Now.. most Laws will also need some line drawings, graphs and charts. Those come over time! 

I am also expecting the high IQ society to contact me with an honorary membership for just coming up with this gem! 

Now a lot of folks have asked me questions like "did you just do this because you were Vetti?" 

"did you put some thought into this?" 

"then how do you explain crowd sourcing?"

"what is wrong with the simple law of averages?" etc. 

I did put some serious thought into this to try and explain what I have seen at work and outside of work both as an individual contributor and as an experienced manager.

When I was an individual contributor years ago, it was an observation that meetings with my peers would be very productive and creative but meetings where our new boss whose core expertise was not our core expertise would be very unproductive. Now he was a smart guy who just did not understand what we were talking about. He also had a position of power. Now if it was a simple law of averages, one added person (if you can call him low IQ) would not have brought the average down.. but the Range makes a difference. 

Think of our Senate and House! There are many smart folks there as well as idiots. Okay, mostly idiots! The collective is absolutely useless. 

Now come to things that are funded by many sources. If the sources act independently and they do not impose on what is being funded, then great! That is how crowd funding works. Everyone throws in 5 bucks and someone raises 250k and they do their thing. Now imagine one idiot throws in his 5 bucks but wants status updates every two days. Boom! Down the tubes it goes!

This actually happens in all cases where the Government funds things. They contribute <5% of the total, yet they impose bueraucracy on the other 95% and slow things down. In that case the Government is the idiot that brings the Collective IQ down. This is why a lot of companies and University labs do not want Government involvement.

As for the Range by 2, it was to avoid negative numbers for the large part. The concept and empirical values seem to go together nicely. If we actually do an experiment where we do a test to evaluate Collective IQ by the time it takes for folks in a room to agree on something simple vs. time it takes for individuals in the same room to get to a solution and what % of times they are right, it would make this complete. 

Unless I switch jobs to become a behavioural sociologist, that might not happen. Maybe someone will take it up?! 

Brainache revisited

The goody bag top spinning atop my laptop..

If the two photographs below were taken with an exposure of 1/60th of a second,

How many rotations a minute was the top doing?

he he he...

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