Reply #4: Are YOU kidding?

[napoleon_in_rags]

I'm taking your post as sarcastic, like you're saying adding Sarah Palin to a group wouldn't make it smarter, because she's not smart.

But the reason this work is interesting is because it answers the question, why are people who aren't classically intelligent often so powerful? If Sarah Palin is so dumb why does she have so much more power than so many "smarter" people? (This is backed by research, e.g. 0 correlation between intelligence and income) The answer is because there are clearly different kinds of intelligence, some which manifest emergently in social groups but are not as clear in the individual. These researchers are doing good work, because they are looking at intelligence as a social phenomenon, not something which exists in a vacuum, and I think that sort of thinking is going to be hugely fruitful.