From my experience effectively trying to create a “task-force” out of a highly rational and cohesive group of friends… high homogeneity is going to extremely important if we want to achieve something at a really high level. For example, I have friends who agree with me on everything epistemic (we update the same way), and who have the same general goals as me, but have a slightly different talent set. This results in very different optimal life paths for the each of us, and that makes the “task-force” not really work like a “task-force.” As you said, it’s just much harder to find a project that fully uses diverse talents.
However, people who are homogeneous can perform at an incredible level. This is because two people who have almost exactly the same knowledge, goals, and talents reinforce each other. For example, an artist who works with a programmer might create a beautiful program, but two programmers who dual code can quite possibly outperform the diverse combination just by the sheer increased excellency of execution. My experience with intellectual pursuits certainly indicates that they work more like this, which I would expect. However, even my logistical, technical and creative experiences which I thought would benefit from diversity also seem to work better when everyone is more homogeneous. The coordination problems of diversity seem to overwhelm the benefits in all but very rare cases.
I think this is because even members of a homogeneous group can begin to specialize and search for outside information that is directly relevant to the task at hand. This is functionally very close to the advantage of having diversity in the group (not quite as good, but close). Then the homogeneity allows them to communicate the new information more effectively to each other, and to better harmonize their specialized actions with each other. These advantages more than close the small gap in knowledge and experience they have when compared to a diverse group in the vast majority of typical situations… or so my experience seems to indicate.
It was absolutely worthwhile. Completely changed my life… all of our lives. In fact, I had one friend who tried to go it alone and who now seriously regrets the decision.
For figuring out what you should be doing, I think that diversity will help greatly. I’ve had many “heavy,” value laden discussions with my friends, and those were made much more productive and insightful by the diverse values we hold. So I think for your goals diversity is going to be very helpful. However, once you figure out what you should be doing, homogeneity has produced the best results for me.
Although I’d like to emphasize that homogeneity can actually help a great deal in working out personal value systems as well. For example, my friend who I am most similar to and I will sometimes intentionally explore different angles of approach to things. It’s kind of like being able to live two lives at once and we’ve learned a great deal from it.
So I guess the general idea is that diversity is good for getting your bearings, but similarity helps you efficiently make your way along that chosen route.