Andrey Khavryuchenko himself

Natural limit on community size

The Dunbar Number

there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships, that this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size … the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.

Dunbar supports this hypothesis through studies by a number of field anthropologists. These studies measure the group size of a variety of different primates; Dunbar then correlate those group sizes to the brain sizes of the primates to produce a mathematical formula for how the two correspond. Using his formula, which is based on 36 primates, he predicts that 147.8 is the “mean group size” for humans, which matches census data on various village and tribe sizes in many cultures.

There are some interesting numbers in the article. Christopher suggests that the top boundary of the size of the group with creative relationships is about 12 persons. Another peak is around 50-70 individuals, which quite nicely corresponds to military unit size.

Looks like that there is a qualitative change in the nature of relationships when the group increases above each boundary. To keep the relationships (and, hence, the information and emotion flow) uncluttered, proxies become a necessity.