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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have this half-baked idea that trying to be rational by oneself is a slightly pathological condition. Humans are naturally social, and it would make sense to distribute cognition over several processors, so to speak. It would explain the tendencies I notice in relationships to polarize behavior - if my partner adopts the position that we should go on vacations as much as possible, I almost automatically tend to assume the role worrying about money, for example, and we then work out a balanced solution together. If each of us were to decide on our own, our opinions would be much less polarized.
I could totally see how it would make sense in groups that some members adopt some low probability beliefs, and that it would benefit the group overall.
Is there any merit to this idea? Considering the well known failures in group rationality, I wonder if this is something that has long been disproved.
There are studies that compared performance of couples with randomly assigned pairs (from the same group) and found that couples perform better than random assignment. This suggests that couple specialize and at the same time rely on the specialization of the other part ("I knew you'd make the appointment").
The other side of the coin this breaking-up: You feel like a part of your brain has been ripped off - namely the part you outsourced to your partner.
Just like when the internet goes out and you can't get to google/Wikipedia/etc! But more traumatic considering how much more bandwidth is exchanged between people in physical and emotional space.