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It's good to know the Dunbar number, but if you want to understand why human societies are so complex, you have to also know the limit. You can think of it as a

It's good to know the Dunbar number, but if you want to understand why human societies are so complex, you have to also know the limit. You can think of it as almost the opposite of the Dunbar number. What is the outer limit of how many people we can know something about? Ultra weak ties have importance in practical ways. If I were hiring a high level software architect, I would expect them to have opinions about some of the big names in the history of software, maybe John McCarthy or Allan Kay or Guido von Russom or Rich Hickley. Neither of us would necessarily have any personal connections to those people, but they operate like the stars in the sky, the give us points by which we can navigate the whole entirety of the human social universe.

Retric 9y ago
There is great diversity in how people think. I have tried very hard to internalize appeal to authority as meaningless so I have mostly divorced ideas from those who had them. As such, I have never looked into big names in any field because I feel it's not just worthless but actually harmful. I know many reasonably competent people who take the opposite approach and still get stuff done.
- lkrubner 9y ago
  At no point did I invoke "appeal to authority." Rather, we navigate a social space via shared points. If we are discussing literature in the English language, it is useful to know who Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Ernest Hemmingway are. Or if we are talking about Bollywood, it is useful to know who Aishwarya Rai or Akshay Kumar are. Or we discuss basketball, it is useful to know who Lebron James is. None of that involves an appeal to authority.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Every one of those examples come from Culture not research. If you want to talk about people that's different from getting things done. Lebron James is for example irrelevant when talking about Collage basketball so he does not impact the sport directly.

Retric 9y ago

There is great diversity in how people think. I have tried very hard to internalize appeal to authority as meaningless so I have mostly divorced ideas from those who had them. As such, I have never looked into big names in any field because I feel it's not just worthless but actually harmful. I know many reasonably competent people who take the opposite approach and still get stuff done.

lkrubner 9y ago
At no point did I invoke "appeal to authority." Rather, we navigate a social space via shared points. If we are discussing literature in the English language, it is useful to know who Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Ernest Hemmingway are. Or if we are talking about Bollywood, it is useful to know who Aishwarya Rai or Akshay Kumar are. Or we discuss basketball, it is useful to know who Lebron James is. None of that involves an appeal to authority.
- Retric 9y ago
  Every one of those examples come from Culture not research. If you want to talk about people that's different from getting things done. Lebron James is for example irrelevant when talking about Collage basketball so he does not impact the sport directly.