5 ms·

While Dunbar's number is useful, keep in mind that the average person is aware of several thousand other people, and it is that larger number that really makes

While Dunbar's number is useful, keep in mind that the average person is aware of several thousand other people, and it is that larger number that really makes human society different from ape society. As a test, I once spent a day writing down every person I knew. I included real people, such as friends of mine, and celebrities, such as Beyonce and John Lennon, and also fictional characters such as God, Moses, Gandalf, Sauron and King Arthur -- these are all people who function as reference points that other humans are also aware of, and therefore form the basis of human interconnectedness and human society. I was easily able to write down 1,000 names, and I would have very easily written several thousand if I kept going. The fundamental difference between human society and ape society is that we humans keep track of several thousand people, and apes do not. I wrote down the results of my experiment here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-12000-people-so-do-you http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-1200... I roughly estimate that I know about 12,000 people.

mannykannot 5y ago
I accept that you know of about 12,000 people... Clearly, language is more than just a three-fold improvement on grooming, but Dunbar's number is plausibly relevant to the origin of language.
- lkrubner 5y ago
  Language took a huge step forward the first time a girl wanted to tell another girl about a boy she met, when the second girl had never met the boy. Many, many concepts had to come into play: a boy you've never met can exist other people can know a person that you don't know events happened at different times in the past other people you don't know can evoke strong emotions in people you do know all of this can be communicated using sounds
Retric 5y ago
Dunbar’s number isn’t referring to names it’s referring to relationships. You don’t have a reciprocal relationship with celebrities on TV or fictional characters. So try and create the longest list where you know how everyone on that list feels about everyone else on that list.
- wahnfrieden 5y ago
  Don't worry about it because Dunbar's number is discredited nonsense anyway
  - Pet_Ant 5y ago
    Citation? I'm interested because it comes up often enough in pop sci and I know I have spread the idea further.
    - wahnfrieden 5y ago
      https://twitter.com/davidwengrow/status/1116786595351470080 https://twitter.com/davidwengrow/status/1116786595351470080 I feel this is an important one to unwind the concepts built on top of it Their book, Dawn of Everything expands on this
  - causi 5y ago
    The value itself might be wrong but there's no denying that a human cannot conceptualize an infinite number of other humans as "people". When you see a news story about two hundred miners dying in an industrial accident you don't feel two hundred times as sad as when you read about a single-vehicle fatality in your hometown.
    - Ntrails 5y ago
      Very few (if any) humans ever really treat all human life as equal emotionally, because that would be either debilitating or sociopathic depending on extreme. We are emotional beings, so it's incredibly hard to exclude emotion from our decisions. Perfectly rational action is in many ways more dangerous from a moral/ethical standpoint. As a society we are currently pretending it is a terrible crime to differentiate, but it strikes me as so at odds with reality as to be a source of unsolvable friction
- kofejnik 5y ago
  Of course you do have a relationship with characters on a TV show you watch. You know them, you have feelings towards some of them, and they can influence your behavior
Anon84 5y ago
I worked on verifying Dunbar's number a few years back using social media data from tens of millions of users: https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5170 https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5170 The main operational idea is that we have a finite capacity for interactions so that if we try to create too many interactions, they'll be shallower than if we focus on just a few important ones.
nathias 5y ago
Knowing about people and knowing people are completely different though. Knowing people in the context of Dunbar's number means a real connection, an open communication channel compared to knowing about people, where we know of them in a mostly conceptual/abstract way. So the real difference maker here is conceptual language.

mannykannot 5y ago

I accept that you know of about 12,000 people... Clearly, language is more than just a three-fold improvement on grooming, but Dunbar's number is plausibly relevant to the origin of language.

lkrubner 5y ago
Language took a huge step forward the first time a girl wanted to tell another girl about a boy she met, when the second girl had never met the boy. Many, many concepts had to come into play: a boy you've never met can exist other people can know a person that you don't know events happened at different times in the past other people you don't know can evoke strong emotions in people you do know all of this can be communicated using sounds

Retric 5y ago

Dunbar’s number isn’t referring to names it’s referring to relationships. You don’t have a reciprocal relationship with celebrities on TV or fictional characters. So try and create the longest list where you know how everyone on that list feels about everyone else on that list.

wahnfrieden 5y ago
Don't worry about it because Dunbar's number is discredited nonsense anyway
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  Citation? I'm interested because it comes up often enough in pop sci and I know I have spread the idea further.
  - wahnfrieden 5y ago
    https://twitter.com/davidwengrow/status/1116786595351470080 https://twitter.com/davidwengrow/status/1116786595351470080 I feel this is an important one to unwind the concepts built on top of it Their book, Dawn of Everything expands on this
- causi 5y ago
  The value itself might be wrong but there's no denying that a human cannot conceptualize an infinite number of other humans as "people". When you see a news story about two hundred miners dying in an industrial accident you don't feel two hundred times as sad as when you read about a single-vehicle fatality in your hometown.
  - Ntrails 5y ago
    Very few (if any) humans ever really treat all human life as equal emotionally, because that would be either debilitating or sociopathic depending on extreme. We are emotional beings, so it's incredibly hard to exclude emotion from our decisions. Perfectly rational action is in many ways more dangerous from a moral/ethical standpoint. As a society we are currently pretending it is a terrible crime to differentiate, but it strikes me as so at odds with reality as to be a source of unsolvable friction
kofejnik 5y ago
Of course you do have a relationship with characters on a TV show you watch. You know them, you have feelings towards some of them, and they can influence your behavior

Anon84 5y ago

I worked on verifying Dunbar's number a few years back using social media data from tens of millions of users: https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5170 https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5170 The main operational idea is that we have a finite capacity for interactions so that if we try to create too many interactions, they'll be shallower than if we focus on just a few important ones.

nathias 5y ago

Knowing about people and knowing people are completely different though. Knowing people in the context of Dunbar's number means a real connection, an open communication channel compared to knowing about people, where we know of them in a mostly conceptual/abstract way. So the real difference maker here is conceptual language.