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Romashka comments on Open Thread, Aug. 15. - Aug 21. 2016 - Less Wrong
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If nomads united into large hordes to go to war, shouldn't the change in the number of men living together have had some noticeable psychological effect on the warriors? I mean, the Wikipedia says that "a Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships", and surely they had to co-work with lots more people than during peace?
Not necessarily, and after all military hierarchies are a way to cope with the complexity of managing thousands of peopla at a time.
Yes, but how? Are there different DN for peace and war?
No I don't think, but still Dunbar number are not an exact quantity, first, and second: if you only need to relate to a handful of comrade in your platoon and one higher ranking official, then you can effectively restrict the number of people with whom you have to interact.
I am asking mostly because I have trouble imagining strict segregation in, say, Mongolian hordes; and intuitively, advance (where you have an army of able-bodied men) should be different from retreat (where you have also women, children and infirm men).