Core influence
Robin Dunbar
Evolutionary psychologist, University of Oxford · Dunbar's number & the layers of friendship
“Your social brain has a carrying capacity.”
The idea
Studying primate grooming and human social groups, Dunbar found the brain can maintain only about 150 stable relationships — and that they nest in layers: roughly 5 intimate, 15 close, 50 good, 150 known. Beyond that, the cognitive bookkeeping simply runs out.
How it shaped Orbit
This is the premise the whole product stands on. Your phone stores five thousand contacts and treats them as equal; Orbit treats your attention as the scarce resource it actually is. The Layers screen is his model made literal — your people, sorted into the circles you can actually sustain, with the app flagging anyone slipping out of a layer they belong in.
In the appLayers · the whole premise