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I would propose that the Dunbar Number is a function of many things. My wife, for instance, was oldest of 8 and is very adept at managing a much larger and more diverse social network than I am although I (youngest of 2) am nearly 10 years her junior... early boomer to my late boomer. I suspect she will maintain this well into Alzheimer's... even if she can't remember their names, they will still be an important and meaningful part of her circle. My parents are now suffering from loss through attrition, but they have maintained (mostly via letter) more friendships/connections throughout their history than I have. They still keep in touch with second cousins and people they went to college with or early-career peers or neighbors from the same era (40's, 50's). Or they would if most of them were not dead. I, on the other hand, am much more likely to maintain significant social contacts digitally, not because of age differences but rather choice of vocation (computer-centric) and a work-centric approach to social networking (most of my "friends" are in some way colleagues or people who I share work with - e.g. do building projects, gather firewood, etc.). I believe that there may be a strong correlation between the Dunbar Number (as some variation on an upper limit) and the viable "band" size of early hunter gatherers. I am not sure if the limitation is that such bands are limited by the cognitive capability or if the limits are more resource-centric (how much human-attributed attrition can the reindeer herd stand?). The clan structures of many aboriginal peoples also seems to be designed to help manage such numbers... a sort of enforced segmentation of the population (though not neccesarily a limit on group size, but some mixing and social rules and maybe meta-rules about when a clan fissions). I grew up in small towns where in principle, everyone "knew" everyone else... There were no strangers. I think this is a "natural" upper limit for a Dunbar Number... if you literally can't engage meaningfully ( more than a nod and a wave) with more than (say) 200 people, then (perhaps) a qualitative shift in the social context happens when you exceed the number. There would also seem to be hierarchical effects (how many heads-of-household or how many patriarchs ... extended families) too. And yes, as I age, I think I might just get more and more curmudgeonly and my Dunbar number is probably going down as a consequence. I wonder what the age distribution of the FRIAM list is? I'm guessing that at nearly 53 I'm somewhere near the median. I know of 2 or 3 folks as young as 18, 19 who might be on this list (though I'm not sure) and believe there is a big hump populated by retirees (nominally 55-80). I'm guessing 40-70 is where the big hump is. - Steve So does the content of this thread provide convincing evidence that the Dunbar number is not a constant but is in fact a monotonically decreasing function of age? |
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