I get the point, but the last paragraph is kind of excessively reductive. It’s simply untrue that the only advantage accrued by putting multiple minds to work on a problem is a “parallel” one. Experts complement one another’s functions. The aggregation of optimization power can be extremely nonlinear.
Take a geologist, a geophysicist, and a petroleum engineer. Assume that they’re all experienced experts. Together these three people stand a good chance of economically finding and producing some oil. Remove any one of the three and the odds of success crater. Add more experts and productivity goes up, but there is a threshold number past which efficiency goes down—too many engineers on the same project end up impeding one another.
Another example would be pair coding. A coding team of two is at least allegedly better than having two individual coders. The advantage of cooperation is not merely parallel.
I get the point, but the last paragraph is kind of excessively reductive. It’s simply untrue that the only advantage accrued by putting multiple minds to work on a problem is a “parallel” one. Experts complement one another’s functions. The aggregation of optimization power can be extremely nonlinear.
Take a geologist, a geophysicist, and a petroleum engineer. Assume that they’re all experienced experts. Together these three people stand a good chance of economically finding and producing some oil. Remove any one of the three and the odds of success crater. Add more experts and productivity goes up, but there is a threshold number past which efficiency goes down—too many engineers on the same project end up impeding one another.
Another example would be pair coding. A coding team of two is at least allegedly better than having two individual coders. The advantage of cooperation is not merely parallel.