# Welcome This vault exists to pursue a single question: **What makes a community of humans healthy?** --- ## Why This Matters Now We live in a time when the fabric of human community appears to be fraying. Trust in institutions—many built in the aftermath of the Second World War—is declining. The familiar structures that once held societies together are being questioned, and in some cases, are beginning to collapse. But this crisis is not merely institutional. It points to something deeper: we have perhaps forgotten, or never fully understood, what allows human beings to live well together. ## The Premise There must be underlying principles—call them the *physics of healthy communities*—that govern how we function as social beings. These are not arbitrary conventions or cultural accidents, but natural laws embedded in our nature as a species. Just as physics describes how matter and energy behave, there ought to be describable patterns for how humans form, sustain, and thrive in community. If we can identify these principles, we can learn them, teach them, and put them into practice. ## The Work This vault is a place to: - **Collect** research, literature, and ideas from those who have thought deeply about community - **Synthesize** findings across disciplines—anthropology, sociology, psychology, political philosophy, evolutionary biology, and more - **Think** through the implications ourselves - **Test** ideas against observation and experience - **Build** toward a coherent understanding of what healthy community requires This is not a project with predetermined conclusions. It is an open inquiry. ## How We Work This vault is collaborative. It is meant to be read, questioned, added to, and refined by those who share this interest. An AI research assistant (Claude) participates in this work—helping to gather sources, think through questions, challenge assumptions, and develop the ideas contained here. All contributors should follow the [[Note Guidelines]] to maintain consistency and graph health. --- ## Map of Ideas This vault currently explores a cluster of related questions around the cognitive and structural limits on human community. The inquiry centers on a simple but profound observation: institutions at 150-250 people maintain natural cohesion where everyone knows everyone, but at 2000-3000 people, without deliberate subdivision, social structure breaks down. ### Core Concepts **[[Dunbar's Number]]** — The proposed cognitive limit of ~150 stable relationships humans can maintain, derived from primate brain size correlations. **[[Social Brain Hypothesis]]** — The theory that primate intelligence evolved primarily to manage social relationships, with neocortex size constraining group capacity. **[[Nested Social Layers]]** — Human social networks organize into concentric circles (5, 15, 50, 150, 500, 1500) with a scaling ratio of approximately 3. **[[Fission-Fusion Dynamics]]** — The pattern by which traditional communities naturally split and merge to maintain optimal group size. **[[Formal vs Informal Organization]]** — The distinction between official hierarchies and emergent social networks within institutions. **[[Coordination Costs and Hierarchy]]** — How hierarchical structure reduces communication overhead from N² to N^(4/3), enabling large organizations at the cost of social cohesion. **[[Social Grooming Time Costs]]** — Maintaining relationships requires time investment; a group of 150 would require ~42% of time devoted to social maintenance. **[[Parkinson's Law]]** — Organizations tend to expand 5-7% annually regardless of work requirements, as officials multiply subordinates. ### Key Sources **[[Dunbar 1992 - Neocortex Size and Group Size]]** — The foundational paper establishing the correlation between neocortex ratio and group size in primates, predicting human groups of ~150. ### Case Studies **[[Gore Associates Organizational Model]]** — W.L. Gore & Associates deliberately caps facility size at 150 people to preserve community and enable lattice organization. ### Synthesis and Analysis **[[Why Large Institutions Don't Subdivide]]** — Examines why modern organizations grow beyond optimal social size without naturally fragmenting, unlike traditional communities. **[[Critiques of Dunbar's Number]]** — Recent statistical reanalyses and theoretical challenges questioning whether a single cognitive limit can be specified. ### Principles Under Development **[[Institutional Subdivision Principle]]** — Proposes that large institutions must deliberately subdivide into units of 50-150 people to maintain social cohesion, as economic and structural forces prevent natural subdivision. ### Open Questions **[[Cognitive Limits on Group Size - Open Questions]]** — Unresolved questions about cognitive limits, cultural modification, individual variation, and institutional design implications. --- ## How the Ideas Connect The inquiry begins with an empirical observation ([[Dunbar's Number]]) grounded in comparative primatology ([[Dunbar 1992 - Neocortex Size and Group Size]]) and explained by evolutionary theory ([[Social Brain Hypothesis]]). This reveals not just a single threshold but a nested structure ([[Nested Social Layers]]) with time costs that constrain relationship maintenance ([[Social Grooming Time Costs]]). Traditional societies worked with these constraints through flexible group structures ([[Fission-Fusion Dynamics]]) that allowed communities to split when exceeding optimal size. Modern institutions, however, face different pressures. Economic incentives, functional specialization, bureaucratic substitutes for social cohesion ([[Formal vs Informal Organization]]), mathematical coordination advantages ([[Coordination Costs and Hierarchy]]), and organizational growth dynamics ([[Parkinson's Law]]) all prevent natural subdivision ([[Why Large Institutions Don't Subdivide]]). This creates a design challenge: how to structure institutions that honor human cognitive and social constraints while achieving necessary scale. Some organizations like [[Gore Associates Organizational Model]] demonstrate that deliberate subdivision is possible, informing the [[Institutional Subdivision Principle]]. Yet significant uncertainty remains ([[Critiques of Dunbar's Number]], [[Cognitive Limits on Group Size - Open Questions]]). The statistical foundations are contested, cultural and technological factors may modify biological constraints, and we lack clear guidance on optimal subdivision strategies. The work continues. --- *The goal is not to mourn what is passing, but to understand what endures—and what must be built anew.*