Yay! Intelligent debate on livejournal! Snowballs freeze in hell!
Ahem.
But to return to the question at hand; let me counterchallenge your challenge. It's true that if you make a request to a larger group, then in general you'll have a better hit rate than with a smaller one. But I contest that in an "acquaintanceship" or "friendship" group, who tend to be an assortment of mixed talents rather than an array of experts. If I want a specific thing, I'll get a far better hit-rate with a group of experts in that field than with my "friends". The only benefit of asking my "friends" is cheapness (I'll get my Linux kernel support/Weber carburettor info/lift to the pub/backrub for free) and sometimes expediency, both of which can be overcome with enough money.
This sounds a little like friends are superfluous, that they can't give you anything you can't buy elsewhere. In a way the second part of that sentence is true, and I'm struggling to try to quantify in what ways it's not. Instinct tells me it's untrue; logic tells me it is. What am I missing?
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Date: 2003-05-13 03:43 am (UTC)Ahem.
But to return to the question at hand; let me counterchallenge your challenge. It's true that if you make a request to a larger group, then in general you'll have a better hit rate than with a smaller one. But I contest that in an "acquaintanceship" or "friendship" group, who tend to be an assortment of mixed talents rather than an array of experts. If I want a specific thing, I'll get a far better hit-rate with a group of experts in that field than with my "friends". The only benefit of asking my "friends" is cheapness (I'll get my Linux kernel support/Weber carburettor info/lift to the pub/backrub for free) and sometimes expediency, both of which can be overcome with enough money.
This sounds a little like friends are superfluous, that they can't give you anything you can't buy elsewhere. In a way the second part of that sentence is true, and I'm struggling to try to quantify in what ways it's not. Instinct tells me it's untrue; logic tells me it is. What am I missing?