A population above roughly ten thousand exceeds any individual’s capacity for personal acquaintance

Evidence

Eight to ten thousand persons is clearly too many, I think, for any individual to know personally. A settlement of this size must also involve a fair amount of occupational differentiation and thus structural limitations to knowing are operating. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 81

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to Milgram’s and Simmel’s accounts of how population size forces cognitive limits on social knowing — the structural antecedents of the blasé attitude the reader is cross-reading.