Smartest person in the room is a myth?

"Don't be the smartest person in the room", as the saying goes. Is that even possible?

Common wisdom teaches that we should strive to surround ourselves with people who are smarter than we are. That way, we improve our chances of getting elevated by those who are more advanced than us.

OK, that makes sense. Why not. It certainly is better to cultivate that approach instead of seeking to surround ourselves with those who are stupider than we are. We should avoid the danger of stupidity rubbing off on us.

But is that really how things are? There is a lot of evidence that as the number of people increases in a group, the collective IQ starts plummeting. You may have one intelligent person meet another intelligent person, and they may have an intelligent, edifying conversation. Then a third intelligent person may join that conversation, and it is possible that the intelligence among the three of them remains intact. However, as the number of people who are joining the group starts increasing, the level of intelligence instantly drops. And the more people join, the lower does the intelligence in the room fall.

Some might say “OK, be that as it may, our job is to avoid stupid people in the room and strive to stick around more intelligent people in the room”. The issue with that is the naive assumption that intelligent people remain immune to the collective plummeting of intelligence when in larger groups. There is no evidence that things work out that way. I have observed that even very intelligent people, when they find themselves in a group, seek the least common denominator and surrender their intelligence to the lowest common denominator, just to be able to fit nicely in the group. After all, intelligent people see no advantage in creating conflicts, so they’ll let the dull, dumb conversation rule the day.

It is because of such collective slide of intelligence that I suspect it is not possible (or, not easily achievable) to seek smarter people than we are when we find ourselves in a room full of people. The mediocrity rules the day whenever there is a gathering of a group of people. It may strike you as jaded and pessimistic to view things that way, but I’d say there is a lot of evidence that supports such an observation.