Garrity’s Law of Inverse Congregational Intelligence

by Steven Garrity

The intellect of individuals in a group decreases exponentially as the number of individuals in the group increases.

 

24 thoughts on “Garrity’s Law of Inverse Congregational Intelligence”

  2. I didn’t like the graphic – so it’s gone. For those who missed it (likely all of you), it was just the law expressed mathmatically (ala E=mc2). The graphic wasn’t great, but it did have clever ALT text: “I’m not too strong in the maths.”

  4. intelligence ~ 1/(number of people)^2

    ..I think… the good old inverse square relationship. Last time I saw that bloody thing was grade 11 physics.

  5. Does this directly relate to the type of humour popular around the silverorange office? Because I have witnessed this rubbing off onto others, even me.

    That’s actually why I had to move away.

  6. I thought you moved away because of those guys call Nicos and Starvos and the whole Greek tanker thing…

  9. I, Andrew Chisholm am in the works of filing a law suit against Acts of Volition for breaking the communications act 10.78 B in the Canadian constitution. In 24 hours if the image is not back up with in said time frames, I will have no choice but to proceed.

    You`ve been warned!

    hahaha

  11. You’re not too strong in the English either Steven (and don’t change that alt text and make me look silly too).

    😉

  13. I know you’re admittedly not too strong in the maths, but the missing GIF has revealed some discrepancies in your law.

    Your law states that the relation is exponential, however your equation states that intelligence inversely proportional to the square of the crowd size. That’s Linus’ Law above; the inverse square relationship, not exponential.

  14. Actually, it’s more complicated than that, Nathan. You see, what you’ve said actually proves Steven right, not wrong:

    Steven removed his image before anyone posted a comment because he thought it didn’t fit. Then, after a group of people (…mob?) forced him to put it back up, it was shown to be incorrect.

    In this, Garrity’s Law of Inverse Congregational Intelligence is proven to be exactly correct. Without the large group of people, the image would never have been put up (thus Steven would have remained intelligent).

    Law proven.

  15. As more people are added to a group, each person’s intelligence wouldn’t necessarily decrease, it would simply adjust towards the average intelligence of the group. Put a stupid person, and a genius together, and I’m sure the genius will get a little less intelligent, but the stupid person has to get smarter.

  16. Have you read “The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement” by Eliyahu, M. Goldratt? I wonder if there is a relationship between your law and his theory of contraints?

  17. Guys, your intelligence levels do not decrease. The debate should be about whether or not your behavior adjusts to your assumption of the group’s intelligence level.

  20. I wouldn’t call it a law so much as a theory. A law must be true under any and all circumstances. There is a situation where each new person joining is of an equal intelligence level. According to your law/theory, the resulting IQ would be getting much smaller, but in reality this may not be the case.

    I suppose it sounds good on paper though… Snappy title!

  21. A law need need not be true under any and all circumstances. It must be able to be imposed upon contrarians regardless of its ultimate truth. When laws of science are overturned they are proven untrue.

  22. While we’re defining our terms, here’s another one for you:

    Garrity’s Law of False Theories: A statement that works “in theory” but not in practice is wrong.

  23. A theory cannot be false as it is a precondition to evaluation. One it is put to the test it is either a law or stoopid.

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