Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Dunbars number relates to remembering relationships between people which is 150 * ~149 things not 150.

You might not remember what everyone in the group thinks of everyone else, but keeping track of grudges is often relevant.




It is nowhere near 150 * 149 because people in human networks have different amounts of connectivity, “influencers” with many connections, and others with few connections, as well as cliques with high internal connectivity but low external connectivity. And relationships between influential individuals matter way more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network


Influencers are more a function of very large social networks, they don’t really represent small tightly knit communities very well.

Consider something like a thanksgiving dinner you have what looks like central figures say a grandparent that everyone is related too, but the grand kids have tighter bonds to their parents than the grandparent.

Extend that to a village and you get more social people with more connections across the community, but those aren’t even close to the strongest bonds.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: