Re: [FRIAM] Dunbar numbers and distributions

[Steve Smith]

I agree with Nick's distinction between "friend" and "buddies/colleagues/acquaintances".   To the extent that I engage in FaceBook Friending and LinkedIn Linking, those social networks are for the latter category (much) more than the former.  It is the *next* boundary that I resist crossing...  granting "friend" status to people who are only *passing* acquaintances.  I might well discover/grow/create new friends through the extra dimensions of engagement that the digitally mediated social networking systems might engender, but I do reserve "friend" to only a handful of people to whom the implied level of commitment is informed, practical and motivated.   Unless artificially constrained (by living in a confined group, isolated from others... e.g. rural village or nomadic tribe), I would not expect to be able to know intimately and give that level of trust to more than a handful of people what with the complicating factors of living in a matrix of social/political/economic forces and a milieu of individuals of varying level of acquaintance bouncing off of me every day. Perhaps what I call "friend" others would call "close friend" and what I call "colleague/acquaintance/buddy" is what others would call "friend"...   Owen, Not convinced. I think you are describing "buddies," "colleagues", "acquaintances", ie, people with whom you share an interests in a relatively narrow context. A friend, on my account, is a person with whom one shares committment to one another's mutual well-being, as well as many common interests, a division of labor, and means of solving interpersonal problems that arise. I certainly don't have 200 friends. N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] [Original Message] From: Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> To: <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Date: 11/25/2009 10:26:49 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Dunbar numbers and distributions On Nov 25, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: <snip> Nobody has a hundred friends, so the word, friend, is being extended in a creepy Orwellian way to include strangers. I disagree. I was surprised to find just how many work, family, school, church, complexity, .. friends I *do* have. I just started facebook a few days ago, and I'm finding a huge number of non-stranger, non-virtual acquaintances I have. I'm trying to keep the list "quality" high .. i.e. only include folks who I really do know and enjoy being in touch with. I'll easily top 200. So would anyone I think who's got diverse contexts mentioned above. No strangers. And not including everyone I do know just to keep the list tight. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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