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05 May, 2023

Dunbar’s number deconstructed

Biology Letters 17: 20210158 Abstract A widespread and popular belief posits that humans possess a cognitive capacity that is limited to keeping track of and maintaining stable relationships with approxi

Type of publication: Journal articles | Lindenfors, Patrik , ; Wartel, A & J Lind
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23 September, 2022

Belief Revision for Growing Awareness

Mind 130(520), 2021 Abstract The Bayesian maxim for rational learning could be described asconservative changefrom one probabilistic belief orcredencefunction to another in response to new information. ). But can this conservative-change maxim be extended to revising one’s credences in response to entertaining propositions or concepts of which one was previously unaware? The economists,) make a proposal in this spirit. Philosophers have adopted effectively the same rule: revision in response to growing awareness should not affect the relative probabilities of propositions in one’s ‘old’ epistemic state. The rule is compelling, but only under the assumptions that its advocates introduce. It is not a general requirement of rationality, or so we argue. We provide informal counterexamples. And we show that, when awareness grows, the boundary between one’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ epistemic commitments is blurred. Accordingly, there is no general notion of conservative change in this setting.

Type of publication: Journal articles | Stefánsson, H. Orri , Steele, Katie
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05 May, 2021

New study deconstructs Dunbar’s number – yes, you can have more than 150 friends

An individual human can maintain stable social relationships with about 150 people. This is the proposition known as ‘Dunbar’s number’ – that the architecture of the human brain sets an upper limit on

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