Do i naturally care about things other than myself, or do i condition myself through my preferences to associate things i rationally decide are "good" with my personal well-being? Wouldn't the latter go a long way toward explaining almost everyone's reluctance to switch political party affiliation, or vote off party lines?
Made me think of the Monkeysphere essay which i'm fairly sure you've seen before. That led me to the wikipedia entry on Dunbar's number which has this to say:
Dunbar has argued that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together. For a group of this size to remain cohesive, Dunbar speculated that as much as 42% of the group's time would have to be devoted to social grooming. Correspondingly, only groups under intense survival pressure[citation needed], such as subsistence villages, nomadic tribes, and historical military groupings, have, on average, achieved the 150-member mark. Moreover, Dunbar noted that such groups are almost always physically close: "... we
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Re: this bit;crazillaSeptember 19 2008, 20:52:59 UTC
Which i think has a good point about what people talk about and what they care about. Things that have to do with their survival (from whatever perspective they view survival)
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Made me think of the Monkeysphere essay which i'm fairly sure you've seen before.
That led me to the wikipedia entry on Dunbar's number which has this to say:
Dunbar has argued that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together. For a group of this size to remain cohesive, Dunbar speculated that as much as 42% of the group's time would have to be devoted to social grooming. Correspondingly, only groups under intense survival pressure[citation needed], such as subsistence villages, nomadic tribes, and historical military groupings, have, on average, achieved the 150-member mark. Moreover, Dunbar noted that such groups are almost always physically close: "... we ( ... )
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Did you cut yourself off here?
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