I came across an interesting follow-up to a post I made a while back that makes reference to the oft-misused Dunbar number 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.