The fun thing about Dunbar's number is that he nails these transitions pretty cleanly. The breaks happen (roughly) at every 3x in growth. What works for 5 peopl

The fun thing about Dunbar's number is that he nails these transitions pretty cleanly. The breaks happen (roughly) at every 3x in growth. What works for 5 people works for 15, but breaks at 16 (plus/minus 2, depends on the team). What works for 16 works up to 45/50 (3X15). Next breakpoint at 150 (3x50), the 'classic' Dunbar number. likewise at 500, 1500, 4K,... and it all comes down to communication bandwidth. The same scaling laws which lead to the cortical columns in the visual cortex specializing into different kinds of signal detection (edges, motion, ...). You can only maintain close connections with so many people.