vorkosigan saga - Was Miles exaggerating the number of Dendarii to dissuade his captors from using his people?

So in the book Brothers in Arms in Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, in one of the conversations real-Miles tried to convince alter-Miles that it's impossible to pretend to be admiral Naismith:

"You still couldn't bring it off," argued Miles. "There are five thousand Dendarii. I know hundreds of them by name, on sight. We've been in combat together. I know things about them their own mothers don't, not in any log. And they've seen me under every kind of stress. You wouldn't even know the right jokes to make.

Was Miles exaggerating to dissuade his captors from using his people? If not, how come he knew that many people well? Dunbar's number places our cognitive limit at 150, not a few hundred...?

Answer

Probably. This is Miles, after all, who is not only prone to telling tall tales (e.g. how he wound up with the Dendarii in the first place), but also expects the impossible from himself (and often gets it), and one of his fatal flaws is that he's so convinced he can do anything that he can fall very flat when it turns out he can't do something.

That said, Dunbar's number isn't an absolute. It can be overcome with proper compartmentalization. Miles probably doesn't know everyone's details intimately, but he has a wide variety of information about the key individuals, and trivia about a lot of the rest. And past that, he probably fudges the details, using his mythical attention to details to convince people he knows them like a brother.

As regards organizational efficiency, the real point of Dunbar's studies, he does a lot of delegating to senior officers. And honestly, there is inefficiency. He has a mutiny on his hands the second time he meets up with them, and he's fairly certain they'll disintegrate under their own weight when he leaves.

Comments

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