The Dunbar number of the beast

I came across an interesting follow-up to a post I made a while back that makes reference to the oft-misused as first espoused in Co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans. In this blog post, the author makes an interesting point about Dunbar’s work:

However, from my perspective, he’s left out one crucial factor: Jesus Christ.

Looking back over Dunbar’s research, I found a number of other glaring omissions. Nowhere in his work does Dunbar make any reference to Zeus or even Apollo. It gets worse. There’s nary a mention of Odin, Thor, Loki or any of the denizens of Valhalla. Most damningly of all, Dunbar doesn’t even make a passing reference to the flying spaghetti monster.

That’s just shoddy science.

Have you published a response to this? :

Previously on this day

14 years ago I wrote Natural language hCard

You can use the hCard microformat in plain English sentences.

16 years ago I wrote Irish spring break

I’m back in Brighton after my short break in Ireland. For those of you uninterested in travelogues and holiday snaps, look away now.

17 years ago I wrote About this site

I’ve updated the "About" section of this site to include a new page about this site and how it was made.

18 years ago I wrote surRealpolitik

Ah, France.