I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

dv said:

I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

that’s a pretty interesting question.. how many people does the average person interact with each day? How many of those are ‘recognisable’? and how much do we take notice of the activities of other people (thinking about that scene whee he is talking to his mate who has to repeat the action of ‘filling’ the vending machine during their conversation)

Arts said:

dv said:

I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

that’s a pretty interesting question.. how many people does the average person interact with each day? How many of those are ‘recognisable’? and how much do we take notice of the activities of other people (thinking about that scene whee he is talking to his mate who has to repeat the action of ‘filling’ the vending machine during their conversation)

On average I interact with about 1.1 people in real life.

I don’t know what a Truman Show is.

I know that a Truman (harry) was a US President. He was also a character in that enormously humourous book about the 100 year old man who climbed out a window.

Michael V said:

Arts said:

dv said:

I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

that’s a pretty interesting question.. how many people does the average person interact with each day? How many of those are ‘recognisable’? and how much do we take notice of the activities of other people (thinking about that scene whee he is talking to his mate who has to repeat the action of ‘filling’ the vending machine during their conversation)

On average I interact with about 1.1 people in real life.

I don’t know what a Truman Show is.

I know that a Truman (harry) was a US President. He was also a character in that enormously humourous book about the 100 year old man who climbed out a window.

The Truman Show is a 1998 film about a man who has been raised his whole life on a giant television set, as part of a TV program, unbeknownst to the man.
It’s not bad.

dv said:

Michael V said:

Arts said:

that’s a pretty interesting question.. how many people does the average person interact with each day? How many of those are ‘recognisable’? and how much do we take notice of the activities of other people (thinking about that scene whee he is talking to his mate who has to repeat the action of ‘filling’ the vending machine during their conversation)

On average I interact with about 1.1 people in real life.

I don’t know what a Truman Show is.

I know that a Truman (harry) was a US President. He was also a character in that enormously humourous book about the 100 year old man who climbed out a window.

The Truman Show is a 1998 film about a man who has been raised his whole life on a giant television set, as part of a TV program, unbeknownst to the man.
It’s not bad.

Thanks. I missed the film. Working in the bush away from most communication platforms does that.

:)

dv said:

I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

A good question. Another way of expressing the same question is:

Given Hamlet’s “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space”, how big would the nutshell have to be?

The beauty of having a Truman style show is that you could make it as big or as small as you wanted. You could have the kid living with just a family or you could have a whole town or county or state. There are no shortage of actors. Budget would be the most limiting issue.

The one big problem I had with the film is the idea of Fiji. Why tell someone there’s something outside the town? Chances are pretty high the person will want to travel at some point. But I guess not telling him about Fiji ruins the point of the movie.

AFAIK Dunbar’s Number is not a particularly well supported hypothesis at this time but it does give us somewhere to start in answering this question.

“Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar”“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

So you would need around 150 full time actors to play Truman’s friends, the barista he buys his coffee from every morning, professionals that he uses repeatedly (eg doctor) etc. On top of that you would need enough part time additional actors that Truman wont notice if they are swapped out. I have no idea what this number would need to be, but considering this is an experiment supposed to run for Truman’s entire life, spent in one single town, I imagine it would need to be pretty high. So say double Dunbar – 300.

>I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

450 at any one time, 150 of those being long term employment contracts.

It would be interesting, I think, to see an analysis of “boutique” forums like this one regarding Dunbar’s number.

By “boutique”, I’m meaning forums that aren’t really public but rather consist of a number of people who have known each other online for a number of years, with the forum becoming more of a private space for those people to interact with each other than a public space where anyone can join in.

If we took the number of regular contributors and added to that the regular cast of non-contributing characters (eg Bubblecar’s lawn mower guy, Sarah’s Mum’s Daughter etc) it wouldn’t surprise me if it came out to around 150 people all up. There’s a number of online forums I read which I think have a good chance of conforming close to Dunbar.

esselte said:

AFAIK Dunbar’s Number is not a particularly well supported hypothesis at this time but it does give us somewhere to start in answering this question.

“Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar”“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

So you would need around 150 full time actors to play Truman’s friends, the barista he buys his coffee from every morning, professionals that he uses repeatedly (eg doctor) etc. On top of that you would need enough part time additional actors that Truman wont notice if they are swapped out. I have no idea what this number would need to be, but considering this is an experiment supposed to run for Truman’s entire life, spent in one single town, I imagine it would need to be pretty high. So say double Dunbar – 300.

>I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

450 at any one time, 150 of those being long term employment contracts.

STAMPS ANSWERED
File closed.

Peak Warming Man said:

esselte said:

AFAIK Dunbar’s Number is not a particularly well supported hypothesis at this time but it does give us somewhere to start in answering this question.

“Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar”“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

So you would need around 150 full time actors to play Truman’s friends, the barista he buys his coffee from every morning, professionals that he uses repeatedly (eg doctor) etc. On top of that you would need enough part time additional actors that Truman wont notice if they are swapped out. I have no idea what this number would need to be, but considering this is an experiment supposed to run for Truman’s entire life, spent in one single town, I imagine it would need to be pretty high. So say double Dunbar – 300.

>I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

450 at any one time, 150 of those being long term employment contracts.

STAMPS ANSWERED
File closed.

But wouldn’t Dunbar’s number be a maximum rather than a minimum?

The maximum number of relationships a person can maintain?
On another thread is the hermit with a number of zero.

So say half Dunbar’s number, 75 in total.

mollwollfumble said:

But wouldn’t Dunbar’s number be a maximum rather than a minimum?

The maximum number of relationships a person can maintain?
On another thread is the hermit with a number of zero.

So say half Dunbar’s number, 75 in total.

Yes,it’s a maximum. As the wiki article says it’s unlikely that neolithic peoples had groups this large, probably closer to 50. The relationships work with smaller number groups. But you can bet your mud hut if a stranger turns up at a neolithic village he is going to be very noticeable to the local population.

I’m thinking of it in terms of overloading Truman’s brain to the point where he is unable to recognize that background “characters” don’t have stable long term relationships with each other or with the regular cast. If you give him 75 friends, there is still “room in his brain” to recognize the lack of realistic social inter-relations in an additional 75 people, thus raising his suspicions. In overloading his brain with 150 close acquaintances you essentially turn all the other background characters in to meaningless noise in his brain rather than something that can be observed and processed.

Peak Warming Man said:

esselte said:

AFAIK Dunbar’s Number is not a particularly well supported hypothesis at this time but it does give us somewhere to start in answering this question.

“Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar”“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

So you would need around 150 full time actors to play Truman’s friends, the barista he buys his coffee from every morning, professionals that he uses repeatedly (eg doctor) etc. On top of that you would need enough part time additional actors that Truman wont notice if they are swapped out. I have no idea what this number would need to be, but considering this is an experiment supposed to run for Truman’s entire life, spent in one single town, I imagine it would need to be pretty high. So say double Dunbar – 300.

>I wonder what would be the minimum number of actors you’d need to hire to credibly run a Truman show.

450 at any one time, 150 of those being long term employment contracts.

STAMPS ANSWERED
File closed.

since we see doctors and other professionals only on an occasional basis (tax officer once a year) I suggest that the number of full time actors is smaller… and given that the other professionals would live in the same town the number of part time actors would also decrease as the rarely seen professionals list could pop up occasionally in a social setting…

also, if we give Truman Prosopagnosia it makes the job a lot easier as the actors find other full time work elsewhere…

You’d only need one – it entirely depends on the premise of the show. Or if you’re not country the “Truman” as an actor, then zero.

You just teach the Truman that they are the only survivor of a global apocalypse.

*counting, not country

Kothos said:

You’d only need one – it entirely depends on the premise of the show. Or if you’re not country the “Truman” as an actor, then zero.

You just teach the Truman that they are the only survivor of a global apocalypse.

Given that the character of Truman was ‘created’ from babyhood, however you raised him would be his accepted ‘normal’ So in this any number from 0 to (nearly) infinity would suffice.

I’m reading another Ion Idriess. One thing that becomes clear is that the number of required humans in the nutshell becomes smaller as the physical size of the nutshell becomes larger.

In the current book, he is on a boat for most of the book with about 6 people for company. Hunting crocodiles.

Or to put it another way, animals can substitute for humans.