Comment by alexpotato
16 hours ago
> This is roughly the same as putting a group of random people
In the book Range by David Epstein [0], he mentions that research has shown that groups of people with very mixed backgrounds leads to much faster rates of problem solving and innovation. The reasoning is that someone will have an experience or piece of knowledge that directly applies to the problem.
As an example, two different groups were given the same problem to solve. One was a homogeneous group of academics. The other had a mixture of academics and non-academics. Both had to solve a problem that involved flowing liquid. The mixed group solved it faster due to one of them having had a father who was a plumber.
i mean i agree diversity of opinion is good for problem solving, but the comment you were replying to is saying telling people to think outside the box doesnt really do anything. The e.g. also seems really cherry picked, im sure after a 100 samplings, the academics would solve the problem faster most of the time
> im sure after a 100 samplings, the academics would solve the problem faster
Repharase thinking:
Some problems are better for academics, other problems require other background information.
The point of the GP isn’t that they are all academics. It’s that one solution group is homogeneous and the other is not.
The claim is: the breadth of a heterogeneous groups is more likely to encompass a good idea than the depth of an academic group.
Also, I have to say that academics have (imo) little experience working together cooperatively, so even on academic problems you’d be better off with some non-academic people in there to act as buffers.
every good team I was ever on used this line of thinking during the hiring process. we whiteboard a problem we worked on in the past and discuss it with the candidate and look for anyone whose thinking about the problem raised our eyebrows!