Pete Wright
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Well, that was...
The only name that jumps into my head right now is Rorschach, who absolutely did not have the hierarchy.
He was that horrible painter.
People are yelling at their phones right now.
Oh, my God.
Maslow.
Maslow.
That's right.
Okay, go ahead.
So Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist who in the 90s was looking at the relationship between the primate brain size and social group size.
So bigger brain, bigger group.
And he ran this math on humans and landed on 150.
150 is the maximum number of meaningful relationships our brains can manage at any given time, right?
Got it.
That is Dunbar's number.
three decades of scrutiny.
But 150 is just the outer ring, if you imagine it like a target, like a darts target.
You know what targets are.
Dunbar's real insight is that... Dunbar's real gig is imagining our friendships that exist in layers, like concentric circles, you know, back to the dartboard.
Or rings on a tree, you might add.