Through years of research,...

Date: 2000-04-25 11:23:00

Through years of research, I have come up with an empirical equation for the intelligence of a group below a certain threshold:

where n is the number of people in the group. As you can see, when n is one, the intelligence of the group is equal to the intelligence of its one member. However, adding more people will only make the situation worse, as the group members will feed off each other's stupidity, making things much worse. One failing of this equation is that it does not allow for negative intelligence. Further empirical evidence will be necessary to determine whether or not this needs to be compensated for. This explains phenomena like microlab clients and Microsoft.

Conversely, the intelligence of a group whose average intelligence is above a certain threshold (not necessarily the same threshold as the one above) can be expressed as:

where n is the number of people in the group and k is a yet-to-be-determined experimental constant less than one and greater than zero. As can be seen from the equation, in a group of smart people, their intelligence feeds off each other, creating a group that is smarter than the sum of their parts. This explains phenomena like the Commune ^[?], Linux, and Slashdot.