#humans # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought #to-digest # Changelog ```dataview TABLE WITHOUT ID file.mtime AS "Last Modified" FROM [[#]] SORT file.mtime DESC LIMIT 3 ``` # Related # TODO > [!TODO] TODO # [[Fractal]] patterns in communities According to the [Dunbar’s number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number), humans cannot maintain stable relationships beyond 150 individuals. Do you think this figure is reliable? Can’t the human brain adapt to new social structures? Should we build software that respects a fractal model, i.e., that keeps the size of local groups below a certain number? In my experience, conversations don’t scale, i.e. the best conversations have less than 4 members. Doesn’t this make sense, as each individual has different goals, model of the world, and personalities, so that personalities multiply rather than add up, it doesn’t scale? Where do you see fractal patterns in communities, in politics, in social networks? Does the disrespect of this pattern harm social interactions? ``` Hi @louis1, this is an interesting topic, thank you for bringing it in! To me, Dunbar’s number is not a figure, it is a concept: there is a limit to our social networks, to how many nodes our attention can process in parallel. 150 may indicate the magnitude of this limit, although there is no reason to consider this number in particular. If we consider a population and the Dunbar’s limit for each individual, we’ll obviously look at a distribution. Skills or conditions may affect this limit (e.g. sales representatives or physicians may have greater limits, or some form of autism may reduce it). Now, the fractal aspect is interesting. Considering your example about number of participants beyond which a conversation’s quality would suffer. Could we transpose this at higher scale? Does it apply to the number of teams that can collaborate together at once within an organization? To the number of organizations that can collaborate together within a society? To the number of societies on a planet? To the number of planets in a solar system, or beyond and up to universes? I do not have answers, although I am interested to read thoughts from the Farnam Street Learning Community! ``` # 240922 That’s an interesting connection to “company culture”, I also see it as shared knowledge across different scales ![[Pasted image 20220812142330.png]] When a problem occurs in a group, you want every member to pick similar solutions in the solution space. I don’t have a lot of experience in maintaining culture in a group, but in my company we try to put actions in place for that, because actions seem to be a better way to maintain culture than words. For example, we believe in transparency/honesty, so every month we have to give 5 praises and one critique to each other one-to-one. I’m not sure how different scales differ, maybe there is a more or less linearity though? ![[Pasted image 20220924093215.png]] ### Related interested links - Conversations: [Celeste Headlee: The Dying Art of Conversation](https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/celeste-headlee/) - Common knowledge at different scales: [Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Common Knowledge and Aumann’s Agreement Theorem](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2410) - Common knowledge at different scales: [The Costly Coordination Mechanism of Common Knowledge - LessWrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9QxnfMYccz9QRgZ5z/the-costly-coordination-mechanism-of-common-knowledge#Startups) # External links