What If: Dunbar's Number
Nov. 8th, 2021 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dsrtaoHumans seem to have a limit on the number of social connnections that they can maintain in a community which is somewhere between 100 and 250; this is called Dunbar's Number (Dn). It's the size of a neighborhood, a medium-sized company or a tribe.
What if humans had a Dn of 20? Could societies build if a feeling of locality and common interests couldn't really extend to more people? What would cause/enable a value like that? At a first guess, humans would have to be much more self-sufficient.
What if humans had a Dn of 20,000?
What if humans had a Dn of 20? Could societies build if a feeling of locality and common interests couldn't really extend to more people? What would cause/enable a value like that? At a first guess, humans would have to be much more self-sufficient.
What if humans had a Dn of 20,000?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-08 04:22 pm (UTC)Intelligence is a plumage-analog in a social arms race.
So a Dn of 20 gives you bears. (Recent studies find bears are in the primate range for smarts, but bears just aren't what you'd call social.)
A Dn of 20,000 makes us outright eusocial, instead of the pseudo version we do now.