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I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. I like Dunbar's number [1] as a roug

I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. I like Dunbar's number [1] as a rough guess but am more than happy to raise it to something like 100k if one were able to be convincing. But I do not see any path forward where we can get buy-in from 300 million people let alone 7 billion. If we were to have a Tribe of 7 billion people, we would need to come up with "facts" that can be agreed upon by 7 billion people. We cannot get 7 billion people to agree that the earth is not flat. I don't have any hopes that we can get 7 billion people to agree on human rights or other things that can be described as "us vs them". This may be my anarchist/extreme leftist ideologies that I personally hold bleeding into what I think is possible/should be done. I have a very hard time separating those feelings from "facts" and I think that makes this point even more clear! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

freeflight 5y ago
> I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. That goes contrary to my personal experience with a www that wasn't mainstream yet, but most certainly already had larger groups of people. As tired and lame as it might sound, imho the biggest culprit is social media and what kind incentives it has set. Social media does not thrive on facts and information, it thrives on emotions, but dry boring non-sensational headlines and information don't make people emotional. What makes people emotional, and interact with your platform, are the crass headlines and claims, the dramatic stuff. So that's what gets pushed to people, and they react accordingly by liking it, and at that point it's already a self-reinforcing loop with increasingly more sensationalist and crass claims that constantly need to top each other to stay relevant. It also directly affects what kind of content people contribute and most importantly how they do it; All the big "influencers" spend quite some time and effort in optimizing their content for that extra reach, along with that come certain behavior routines to sell the content, which then get normalized. And because traditional media struggles to keep up with that, and stay relevant, they also get colored by this, not only by having made social media their new source of reporting, but also by making their own reporting more in line with these trends. Too many just chasing the dopamine kicks from the "likes" and "karma", it feels like mass-hysteria that's steadily increasing in intensity.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I've heard the theory, and I find it compelling, that what binds large groups together isn't a shared set of facts but shared exploration of some great mystery. Not sure it's so much an upper number as that not everyone is interested in plumbing the same mysteries.

freeflight 5y ago

> I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. That goes contrary to my personal experience with a www that wasn't mainstream yet, but most certainly already had larger groups of people. As tired and lame as it might sound, imho the biggest culprit is social media and what kind incentives it has set. Social media does not thrive on facts and information, it thrives on emotions, but dry boring non-sensational headlines and information don't make people emotional. What makes people emotional, and interact with your platform, are the crass headlines and claims, the dramatic stuff. So that's what gets pushed to people, and they react accordingly by liking it, and at that point it's already a self-reinforcing loop with increasingly more sensationalist and crass claims that constantly need to top each other to stay relevant. It also directly affects what kind of content people contribute and most importantly how they do it; All the big "influencers" spend quite some time and effort in optimizing their content for that extra reach, along with that come certain behavior routines to sell the content, which then get normalized. And because traditional media struggles to keep up with that, and stay relevant, they also get colored by this, not only by having made social media their new source of reporting, but also by making their own reporting more in line with these trends. Too many just chasing the dopamine kicks from the "likes" and "karma", it feels like mass-hysteria that's steadily increasing in intensity.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

I've heard the theory, and I find it compelling, that what binds large groups together isn't a shared set of facts but shared exploration of some great mystery. Not sure it's so much an upper number as that not everyone is interested in plumbing the same mysteries.