X has seen an ongoing debate about the extent to which last night’s debate debacle was planned. Some say it’s all planned and coordinated. Others believe this is just “emergent.” Is this a meaningful debate? If so, how can we tell which is which? Why does coordination even matter? The extent of coordination is actually the extent of group intelligence and planning ability. An uncoordinated group is unintelligent, only able to react to what is right in front of it like a bunch of animals. A coordinated group is intelligent and can plan out chains of events and contingencies in advance. The emergence hypothesis claims that what happened is like this: Short sighted individuals planned t
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