May I be cynical?

There is this contest for a million dollars. I know a bunch of smart folks. I'll try to get them interested in being on a team with me, and I might make a bunch of cash off of their talent.

I see what is in it for you. But what is in it for me? If I was motivated enough to seek this million dollars (I'm not), and I'm smart enough to possibly succeed (possibly = low odds in my case), I'm not going to want to be partnered with a large group of people, most of whom are going to contribute very little to my effort. But many of whom will be quick to say that they contributed something. That sounds like a headache. Doubly so since it is well known that large groups of people tend to suffer from apathy. Read The Logic of Collective Action for more on that.

If I wanted to put in the work, I'd register my own team, download the data, and try a bunch of things by myself, or with a small number of highly motivated friends. I wouldn't participate in a perlmonks team. I believe that my way of thinking is likely to be common among the people who are most likely to do the work.

I therefore predict that if someone from perlmonks wins the prize, they won't be participating in your team.

In reply to Re: Want a million dollars? by tilly
in thread Want a million dollars? by kwaping

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.