> Isn't that the opposite of how it works?

No.

> Transferring data and calculating the core of a new block takes a fraction of a second, and then it takes an average of several minutes to find the right random numbers to finish the block.

A PoW, say Bitcoin, is configured in the consensus algorithm to avoid duplicate spending. The fastest, correct miner for a block that communicates the quickest to the network will get the block.

I think you're very confused about how mining blocks works. It only takes microseconds to test a specific hash. Every miner is testing a different random bunch of numbers to see if they get a lucky result where the hash starts with enough 0 bits.

There's near-zero overlap between the numbers tested by different miners. So a latency advantage does not make you win. Everyone is picking lottery numbers in parallel. If three miners have the exact same hash rate, and one of them has a 2 second head start, then the one with the head start is only going to win 33.4% of the time.

You're making some incorrect assumptions about what I wrote, based upon somehow reading things I didn't write. I am intimately familiar with the bitcoin network. I never said that many miners simultaneously work on the same block. Don't worry, you aren't alone in the crypto world with making assumptions.

"The fastest, correct miner for a block that communicates the quickest to the network will get the block." is misleading at best and completely false at worst.

If I'm misinterpreting you, feel free to clarify, but to me it looks like you're saying that latency matters (more than a fraction of a percent) with cryptocurrency, and it does not matter.

And moreso, "the fastest decision-making computer with the shortest time to the network makes the block." is not true. Even if you mean "lucky" by "fastest", since the computer that finds a block doesn't have to be fast, 99+% of the time blocks are found far enough apart that time to network is irrelevant.