2026-08-29 07:53 UTC
This is a decent outline on the critique of Dunbar's oft-cited 'number' -- when actually it would be a pretty broad range on the cognitive ceiling of number of relationships we can meaningfully manage. That's IRL and never mind parasocial social media!
This doesn't undermine the 'social brain' neocortex ratio increase relating to group size (but even that is quite tightly refined by Lindenfors et al).
https://siliconcanals.com/n-the-famous-limit-of-150-friends-a-human-brain-can-supposedly-hold-turns-out-to-rest-on-a-calculation-whose-own-confidence-interval-runs-from-2-to-520-too-wide-to-support-any-specific-number/
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@RadicalAnthro@c.im 2026-08-29 07:57
This is one of the finest papers giving the 'social brain' a hard time with focus on 'embodied social brain', movement and actions which support sociality. Louise Barrett, who worked a lot with Dunbar, knows whereof she speaks! https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8710874/