• miguel@fedia.io
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    25 days ago

    The study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12730 for those not interested in a cracked pop-sci article.

    Table 5, I think, is what the pop-sci takeaway is coming from, which is quite an oversimplification. The idea that “150 people” is what humans can understand is, IMO, a misinterpretation of the study. The study refers to multi-tiered groups ranging from ‘Band’ (~45.5) to ‘Tribe’ (~1350.4) based on the degrees of intelligence, cooperation, etc of the members.

    If it’s even relevant, it supports the points I raised that communism is a theory that works well only in small select groups, though I would argue it’s probably correlation and not causation in this case. At least until we have evidence of other primates practicing political theory.