And another problem with it is it prevents talking.

Some anthropologists liken human speech to chimpanzee grooming. To bond, a chimpanzee will sit there and pick through another chimpanzee’s back hair. Time spent doing this builds a bond between them.

Conversation works that way for humans. It’s just an instinctual emotional need: to put energy into activities that create bonds with other people.

I’m autistic, and learning the above was a sort of breakthrough moment for me in terms of respecting small talk, respecting the real value of a conversation even when there’s no practical need for knowledge transfer.

Of course, I’d rather bond by snuggling because it low-key hurts to talk, but our culture really only permits that with animals, lovers, and family.

Incidentally, that connects with another interesting fact about the Dunbar number.

As some may know that’s the number of people who can live in a tribe or community where everyone’s brain still has the capacity to remember (a) how they feel about each other person and (b) how each other person feels about each other person.

It’s about 120 individuals, for humans. Once it gets beyond 120 people, you start encountering “strangers”. People you might have seen, but you don’t know who they’re tight with, what they’re up to.

For chimps it’s 40 individuals. Chimps can’t keep track of more than 40 nodes in an interrelationship graph of relationships.

So 120 and 40. It’s a ratio of three. Some speculate this ratio is because chimps’ bonding behavior permits bonding with one other individual at a time, and humans’ bonding behavior permits bonding with three individuals at a time.

For chimps, that’s grooming. You can groom one other chimp’s back at a time, allowing you to bond with one other chimp.

With humans it’s talking. So why three people? (This is where it gets really interesting, at least for me.) It’s three people because when one person is speaking to three or fewer people, it’s intimate enough to be a bonding experience. And when a person is speaking to four or more people, it doesn’t feel intimate enough to be a bonding experience.

The really fun part is you can see this happening at social gatherings. Because one speaker can engage three listeners while maintaining intimacy, this means conversations can be two to four people. As soon as a fifth person walks up, beer in hand, to join the conversation, it will split into two conversations. You’ll have a 2 and a 3, instead of one big 5.

Or, if the conversation does stay stable at 5 people, it morphs into more of a “presentation” that separates the group into speakers and audience, and that’s not a bonding experience.

At most social gatherings, people want to connect, so instead of that switch to audience mode the conversation will split when it reaches 5, into separate 2- and 3-person conversations.

So the other problem with the google mantra is it removes an excuse to talk from society, and we need excuses to verbalize at each other so we don’t feel alienated. Asking for directions, bumming a cigarette, talking about the weather or sports, saying good morning and how-are-you-im-fine and hello, these are all cultural scaffolds that make excuses to hear each other’s voices.

And asking for basic info is part of that. In conversations, we get more things to say if we normalize asking for and providing basic background info. It helps people get their voices warmed up, to say things that aren’t that deep, to present easily-found knowledge, just warm up the vocal chords with the basic stuff.