The hard part is attaching the 2nd head to the first body. I haven’t been able to perform the surgery before the head dies. Any tips?

I’ve had some coworkers where working with them was like working alone, but harder

nope, also the potential for medical complications, if one head gets a disease and the other one doesnt, and you are sharing organs to. and the other head individual wants to do thier own thing.

The 2 heads thing is often not even from getting any input from the other person, it’s through having to explain your own idea that you reflect on it.

I kinda remember a coding(or process) method where you explain your idea to a plant or chair, to aid with idea refinement.

I once was assigned a group project with some other students in my sociology class. They forced me to change a correct answer to a wrong answer despite my vehement protests to the contrary.

Yes, until you start factoring in communication overhead/data loss. That’s why throwing more people at a problem will only help up to a certain point.

More people only improve on a problem when they can effectively communicate. At some point time spent making sure everyone is looped in on the plan exceeds the time saved by one more problem solver.

So to circle back to your actual question: Two heads will most likely be smarter than one, unless they spend more than half the time bickering in disagreement and misunderstanding.

Yes. One of the interesting findings of cognitive science is the human brain effectively uses an interlocutor as part of itself. This is why rubber ducky debugging works, and why people often use an internal version of the process when thinking through problems. Having a second point of view also helps prevent ‘lock in’ because the other person can notice things which are not perceived by the first.

I don’t think their intelligence would increase but their knowledge might.

In highschool, a friend and I once took the same chemistry test and each got 80%. We each got right the questions the other got wrong. So, if we had been allowed to work together, it’s likely we would have gotten 100%. On the other hand, we might have convinced each other of the wrong answers and lowered our scores to 60%. The knowledge we had in common made up 60% of the test.

When two people share knowledge, they may increase each other’s knowledge. The amount it increases depends on how much of the knowledge they already had in common and how much they each have that the other doesn’t.

If they’re working on a problem that can be broken into multiple loosely-coupled parts, or that requires exploring a very large conceptual space.

I’d say that 4 eyes are better than 2, rather than 2 heads when referring to problem solving. It’s pretty common to get stuck down one train of thought and miss an obvious solution, which is where a different perspective can help.

Yes, a pair is far easier to keep balanced in my pack.

I’d say they’re twice as experienced, and will be able to examine possibilities twice as fast. It’s still possible they just can’t do whatever thing, like speak Klingon or solve a Clay problem, though. Basically, 0+0=0.

A pair generally is fine, but as you add more you start getting problems with overhead and miscommunication, and more and more things will start to scale sublinearly. And, if it’s something where broad agreement is important, more people is often worse.

Not necessary, but it’s true that some people work better in couples.

What skills and experience do they have? Is it in any way related to what they are trying to achieve?

If you select two average people with relevant skills and experiences you’ll most likely get a better result.

Two random people not so much. One person will probably do all the work, like group projects in school.

I guess you are envisioning some sort of Sci fi scenario with the combining thing.

In a real world practical approach, my wife and I have been so much more successful because or our partnership.

One would hope, but in practice almost never.