Like all mental models, Dunbar's number is not perfect. However, readers who stop after the introduction of this article may be left thinking it's not useful at all.
I find it very useful in helping leaders in early-stage organizations that are growing fast recognize why the tools & techniques they've used to get to 30-80 people are breaking down as they approach 100-150 people. It helps frame why new tools & techniques for organization and communication are required.
15
45-50
150
450/500
1500
5000
> is there a difference between 30 million and 300 million, 3 billion to 30 billion?
In organizational terms? That is, terms of how you would go about organizing or operating ...
... I would humbly only go as far as saying this: I feel there has to be (some) upper limit beyond which any "structure" other than a "self-organizing" structure will collapse or be unmanageable.-
PS. DAOs (which, sadly, seem (?) to be on the wane), were at (some) end of that spectrum, methinks ...
I wonder if the stability of DAOs benefit or are hindered with scale. It may be implementation specific as well.
The Sci-fi part of my brain finds parallels in feudalism, which used delegation and strict hierarchy to deal with the span of control issue.
I would posit it is. Totally.-
PS. For all we know, the first thing a superhumanly intelligent AGI might do is "forcibly-self-organize" us into a DAO, doing away with the political system. I, for one, would welcome that :)
> The Sci-fi part of my brain finds parallels in feudalism
Elsethread - when talking abou how the Mongols almost overtook Europe - the claim was made that - to a point - part of the reason the hordes had to stop is that "descentralized" (as opposed to centralized clan-leader-ruled) feudal structures made it hard to make advances.-
... so feudalism came up, as a somewhat advanced form of decentralization. Which was neat.-
I'm not sure about the math and exact numbers (which probably vary depending upon the situation anyway) but it's pretty clear that things are quite different at different scale points.
... and different organizations, of course.-
Leaves me wondering - among many things - what the "largest qua payroll" organization worldwide might be.-
US Dept. of Defense, Chinese PLA, Indian railways. Walmart, Saudi Aramco come to mind.-
You can see some of this in your examples.
US DoD is, of course, actually part of the US government but relatively few DoD employees ever really interact with people in other US government branches. Ditto with Walmart store employees and the "mothership."
Logically, it makes sense that the situation keeps changing. But it still feels weird. How many different kinds of relationship are we capable of?
Kinds? (qualitative) ...
... I think you very much upped the ante there :)
I'd posit a (cheap, easy) guess: Infinite.-
PS. Of course, taking the "cheap" way out in thinking about this of assuming each one-on-one relationship (not to mention one-to-many, and many-to-one and many-to-many, like mentioned upthread) to be a unique "kind", is an easy way out: As many types of relationships as people, because no two people are alike, and so is their relationship. Heck, considering each of the individuals (themselves) involved, might subjectively experience a different relationship, there's even a "two to each pair" pairing of relationship types to participants, to be considered ...
Now, when, IMHO it gets interesting is if we - a bit more rigoroulsy - attempt a "taxonomy" of relationship "types".-
(And, then, again, I am sure anthropology has studied and catalogued those to death ...)
PS. Foxconn. Of course.-
PSS. The "tripling" rule seems to hold. 1/1.5MM seems to be a "grouping", peaking at around 3MM on average. 3MM. That is large for an organization ...
Interesting, in that you might even have to "backpedal" (rehire) as growth happens.-
It's very nearly always useful. Many of the worst problems we have in the world around us arise because, it turns out, people just don't scale.
Which, if I may, applies both in the sense that groups of people "handle" differently, and differently vis-a-vis group size, and in the sense that we seem to have an innate inability as humans to deal with exponential, non-linear, "network" phenomena.-
Quite useful in that context, as you say, like a mental model.-
PS. Interesting that the "threshold" seems to be somewhere between 80 transitioning to 100 (ballparking, of course).-
I find it interesting that everybody focus on the transition at 100. (Except for educators, that are completely aware of the 20 one.)
https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Experience/Military-Units...
Of course, they have various considerations that may not apply more generally.
PS. Manywhere, average classroom size is 30ish ...
The analogy fails to describe people given that major past issues can color relationships, but it doesn't seem reasonable to think that the number of such major issues will grow linearly with tribe size, this those will also be sub quadratic (I am proposing that as tribe size doubles, the number of people you love/hate due to past shared experiences less than doubles).
You'd be surprised. More I know, more I like me dog, as someone said :)
PS. Romans, used a professional "nomenclator", that would follow you around helping you remember these things.-
Feasibly, if your whole 150 person village had a meeting, you'd want all pairs. But then you'd also want all triplets, quartets, etc which I believe is exponential.
*Technically 22,350, as you don't need self pairs
This sounds like a "so-and-so acts different towards bar in front of baz" scenario.-
There is shockingly little justification for a core tenant of this piece. Which I suppose is fitting, since the origin of Dunbar's number is also shockingly thin on science...
Now that's an interesting angle. I'd be curious to know more, since Dunbar's often quoted.-