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The Straussian Moment
gwern.netSociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.
Yuval Noah Harari • Sapiens
The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
amazon.com

Then, three years after Goodall’s book was printed, a series of incidents occurred that horrified her. The tribe of chimps Goodall had been watching became quite large. Food was harder to find. Quarrels broke out. To relieve the pressure, the unit finally split into two separate tribes. One band stayed in the old home territory. The other left to c
... See moreHoward Bloom • The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
The emergence of humans and other living creatures is best explained as the intended result of an intelligent mind, rather than as the happenstance of an unintended and undirected process.
Richard Holloway • Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
For example, economist George Steckel and anthropologist Jerome Rose (2002) examined health indicators for Prehispanic New World societies and found that the median health of individuals declined as societies grew more complex. This suggests social complexity emerges from mechanisms that promote coordinated behavior even if it is not in the best in
... See moreJessica C. Flack • Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)
Since