Scott Alexander discusses the challenges of community growth, relating his experiences with micronations and rationalist groups to theories about natural group size limits.
Longer summary
Scott Alexander reflects on his experiences with micronations and the Bay Area rationalist community, noting that both faced difficulties in growing beyond a certain size. He connects these observations to Samo's research on Dunbar's number and its potential extensions. The post explores the idea of natural group size limits at different scales (e.g., 12, 150, 1000, 90,000 people) and how these might relate to social structures like families, clans, tribes, and city-states. While Scott expresses skepticism about the universality of these exact numbers across different contexts, he acknowledges the apparent difficulty many communities face in growing beyond certain thresholds.
Shorter summary