100 Men and a Gorilla

I was walking my dog the other day and asked myself how I would explain critical thinking to students. Not the textbook version. The version where you take a question apart and find out it was never one question. My dog had no opinion on the matter.

The example I landed on is a bit embarrassing: 100 men against a gorilla. If you missed it, the question started as a Reddit thread in 2020 and went properly viral in late April 2025. Could 100 unarmed men beat one silverback? TikTok argued, zoo directors gave interviews, and at least one US senator shared his view on the record.¹

It is a ridiculous question. That is exactly what makes it useful. Nothing depends on the answer: no budget, no steering committee, no careers. Which makes it a rare thing, a safe place to practise thinking without politics getting in the way.

First Consideration: One Question Is Never One Question

#

Allow me to take it apart.

Recruiting. Who are the 100 men? Random commuters from Zurich main station at rush hour, or fighters in their prime? Can we choose them, train them, demand anything from them? Half of the online debate was people quietly assuming different answers to this and then arguing about the result.

Strategy. How do they attack? All at once, or in waves? Do they strike, or try to hold the limbs? Where do they strike? A hundred people cannot physically reach one gorilla at the same time, so “all at once” is already a fiction.

Cost. Most serious answers I read agreed that the men probably win eventually, once the gorilla tires, if they accept heavy losses. So the real question is how many losses, and who decides that this is an acceptable price.

Who goes first. This is the one I keep coming back to. The first third will take a beating with almost no chance to win. Who volunteers for that? Probably the bravest. Which means the ones left for the end, when the gorilla is tired and the fight can actually be won, are not the bravest. The man whose post started the hype said himself he would join the 100, just not the first wave. An honest answer. I will come back to it in the next post.

Four sub-questions, each with its own hidden assumptions. And I have barely started.

Second Consideration: The Trap

#

Here is the catch. I could keep going. What is the terrain? Is the gorilla hungry? Do the men know each other? Is there a referee? Every answer opens two new questions. Taking a question apart has no natural end.

That is where overthinking comes from, as far as I can tell: having no rule for when to stop. Oversimplifying is the same failure in the other direction. “100 is a lot, the men win”, done, before the assumptions that matter are even on the table. Both happen for the same reason. Nobody decided how much detail the question deserves.

In a gorilla debate this costs nothing. In a programme it costs months. Or worse, it costs nothing at first, and you find the missing assumption in production.

So how do you get the balance right? I don’t think it is mainly an individual skill. I think it is a leadership question.

Third Consideration: A Diverse Team Is Not Enough

#

The obvious answer is diversity of thinking. Put the overthinkers next to the sprinters who don’t mind hitting their head. People who live for progress next to people who protect the status quo. Some who only see upsides, some who only see risks. Mix them, and the blind spots cancel each other out.

I believed that for a long time. It is only half right.

People are not fixed types. I am certainly not. In topics I know well, I see every risk, because I have been burned by most of them. In topics I don’t know, I see opportunities everywhere, because I don’t know yet where the problems are hidden. Same person, two meetings, two opposite positions. It also changes with the time of day and the stage of life I am in.

Take Adele Vance, a network engineer with fifteen years of experience. On Monday she reviews a SASE design and lists ten ways it will fail. On Thursday, in an AI workshop, she suggests automating half of the service desk by Christmas. She is not inconsistent. She is an expert in one room and unburdened in the other.

So you cannot build a balanced team by hiring types. The type you hired shows up in some meetings and not in others.

What Leadership Can Do

#

If the stance moves with the topic, leadership has to separate the stance from the person. Three things I have seen work, admittedly on anecdotal evidence.

Assign the stance. For a given decision, one person’s job is to argue against it. Disagreement becomes a role, not a character trait, and nobody has to risk their reputation to raise a concern. Rotate the role. The optimist gets practice in seeing risk, and the sceptic gets to argue for something for once. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats is a formal version of the same idea.

Use the asymmetry instead of fighting it. Ask experts about the risks in their own field. Ask them about opportunities in someone else’s. Ask the newcomer what they would try. You get both views from the same people, just pointed in the right direction.

Decide the depth before you start. How much thinking a question deserves should be agreed before the thinking begins, not discovered halfway through. More on that in the last post of this series.

Back to the Gorilla

#

I still don’t know who wins. I have noticed that I no longer care. The interesting part was never the answer.

My dog, meanwhile, had produced a far more concrete problem on the pavement. No debate, no volunteers. I cleaned it up.

But someone still has to step into the arena first. Who that is, and what it costs them, is the next post.