Friday, February 03, 2006

Nature Abhors Stupidity

I was reading an article online about a confrontation between a Motorist and a Cyclist. This guy Hool was walking down the street with his camera when all of a sudden this incident occurred right in front of him. He snapped off some nice pictures and posted them on City Noise.

Here is what happened as far as I can tell:

It seems some courier chick in Toronto saw some dude drop some garbage out of his car and onto the street and decided to return it to him by opening his car door and chucking it into his face. The dude, not liking this one bit, returned the favor by tossing a couple of cups of coffee on the courier. The courier decided that the best response to this was to key his car a little bit. He then tried to stomp her bike and then some grappling ensued until the bystanders pulled the guy off.

This is kind of a funny story, but what makes it really hilarious is the commment section on the above photo blog. Holy shit, these people are insane. The comments are peppered with racial hatred, misogynistic rage, homophobia. Extreme left wing, extreme right wing, extreme wing nut. Nazis, Femminists, Environmentalists, Male Chauvinists. Canadians, Americans, Danes, Germans, Brits, Scots. Criminals, Cops, Lawyers, Kids, Teens, Adults, Seniors. Christians, Catholics, Moslems, Jews. Educated, uneducated, special educated. It seems every group out there has some opinion as to the cause of this whole meelee.

Here's mine:

This was one of those rare occurrances when two people came into contact who shouldn't have. It is said that Nature abhors a vacuum, well I have developed a similar theory of my own.

Nature Abhors Stupidity: This theory states that there is a mechanism in nature that ensures that humans gathered together in groups maintain some minimum level of intelligence. Nature has also created it's own fail safe system in which groups with exremely low intelligence levels will usually end up killing themselves or each other. There is a minimum level of intelligence required to maintain order when there is a gathering of more than one person. The level of intelligence in a group can be determined by the following formula:

I = (x1 + x2 + ... + xn)/n

I = Intelligence Level of the Group
xy = Individual IQ
n = Number of People


My theory states that for any group where I is above 100 the Probability Of Mayhem, or POM, becomes lower. For goups where I is below 100 the POM increases. The POM for each instance of I is listed here:


< 60 = More than 90% POM
60 - 69 = 70% to 80% POM
70 - 79 = 60% to 70% POM
80 - 89 = 50% to 60% POM
90 - 99 = 40% to 50% POM
100 - 109 = 30% to 40% POM
110 - 119 = 20% to 30% POM
120 - 129 = 10% to 20% POM
>130 = Less than 10% POM


Example A: There are 4 people in an elevator Joe has an IQ of 130, Bill has an IQ of 116, Mary has an IQ of 127 and Cletis has an IQ of 67.

I = (130 + 116 + 127 + 67)/4
I = 440/4
I = 110


We find that this elevator has a POM of only 30% and will therefore likely reach their floor with nothing more major than a slight disagreement.


Example B: There are 4 people in an elevator Bubba has an IQ of 85, Skeet has an IQ of 72, Gump has an IQ of 107 and Clem has an IQ of 69.

I = (85 + 72 + 107 + 69)/4
I = 333/4
I = 83.25


We find that this elevator has a POM of about 53% and therefore it is more likely that this ride will result in a heated argument or a minor assualt before reaching it's destination.


Now let's put the situation of the Motorist and the Cyclist to the test.

Here we have "The Cyclist", with an estimated IQ of 59, and the motorist with an estimated IQ of 53.

I = (59 + 53)/2
I = 112/2
I = 56


In this scenario we see that the Intelligence Level is a dangerous 56. That works out to a POM of greater than 90%. So really there is no surprise that this situation escalated into what it did, in fact it is surprising that nobody died. This is the way nature has intended for meetings like this, it all aids in the course of Natural Selection.


The last time I saw an Intelligence Level that low was amongst a bunch of U.S. soldiers in Bagdad the other day. Their dangerously high POM caused the group of soldiers to mistakenly open fire on the car of the Canadian Ambassador.

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