I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned. It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
I regard it as a dangerous mind virus. It is hard to rid yourself of it even if you see it is bullshit and harming you because it requires a substantial change in how you see your life. I think that’s because it is some hard truths (“people like powerful people”) mixed in with some cognitive distortions (“dominance is the primary mediator of all interactions”). The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in. Thus, the endless arguing about whether behavior is really “alpha” or “beta.”
There are good bits there, such as not letting yourself be pushed around. But that doesn’t make it all good or true. I really think the whole artifice is a cop-out for actually doing the work of individuation and self-development because you outsource all the hard work of deciding what you want to be and the temporary, self-imposed emotional exile it takes to actually discern that to following guidelines ultimately given to you by other people.
You’re still not crafting your own life, you’re just changing who you get your life script from.
It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
A lot of men are terrified of the idea of not seeming masculine enough- and what it would mean for them romantically, socially, and professionally- which is why this is appealing as an idea.
Supposed “alpha behaviors” are seemingly identical to toddler behaviors to me. I think it’s ironically non-masculine to be so terrified of how you appear that you play act as basically a belligerent child incapable of compromise, teamwork, or navigating disagreements with dignity instead of being yourself.
The ancient stoics had a much healthier, and more useful idea of masculinity IMO- that still lets you be strong and not pushed around by others inappropriately.
It's like up-badging a car. Most people won't care about it. Those who are knowledgeable about it will see through it. And those who actually do care about superficial things like that are probably not the kind of people whose respect should matter to you
It is narcissistic at its core. If you had a healthy sense of self, you wouldn’t need to constantly be monitoring how others perceive you, and trying to manage that.
Yes, that is absolutely the case, and while Narcissism appears strong and confident from the outside, it's really driven by massive amounts of anxiety and terror over not appearing good enough. Narcissism is really an awful disability caused by trauma that leads to a lot of suffering, not something impressive and powerful.
This is why I suggested stoicism (and modern therapy methods based on it like ACT and CBT) as a practical alternative that fulfills the same emotional need in a mentally healthier, and more responsible way.
It essentially flips this around entirely, and says the only thing that really matters is how you perceive yourself, e.g. knowing you are acting according to your own goals and values. You can only control how you act and perceive things, not what others think about you, and there is no value or point in worrying about things outside your control.
Instead of trying to "look strong" you can actually just be strong- and stand by your convictions and values.
I think in part it is that the flawed study might actually be relevant to them because of the flaw. It studied captive wolves in an unnaturally constrained (and therefore competitive) environment, and that is how some people feel a lot of the time.
Trying to be the alpha in such a situation, so they can look down at the others and feel better, instead of doing anything to try actually improve the world, is an unhealthy reaction, but one I can at least understand.
Trying to be an “alpha” irrespective and create that sort of situation for others, on the other hand, is rather despicable.
Another factor in the longevity of alpha/beta/other designations is that they don't only come from that study (and those that followed it, or it referenced). The terms were used elsewhere both in science and fiction (and, specifically, in well known science fiction such as Huxley's “Brave New World” which pre-dates the publication of Schenkel's infamous wolf study by a decade and a half).
On the contrary, the so-called "capitalism" that emerges when we respect individual rights is the one way we can escape this.
Too much emphasis is placed on government regulation and corporate environments to "make things right" when, in the end, they are all just rigid bureaucratic structures that trap people and force them into heirarchies.
For my entire life, I have mostly tried to conform to this -- albeit mostly focusing on startups because they are more likely to value individuals, and less likely to have rigid structure and tradition -- but I'm only just now realizing that my autistic and ADHD tendencies being pigeon-holed even this much is a recipe for the burnout I've experienced for most of my adult life. I need to try something different!
And if I lived in a more rigid society (all non-capitalist countries are far more rigid than capitalist ones -- pretty much by definition) my options for fleeing rigidity would be vanishingly small.
The simple fact is that alpha males are a fact of nature. In wolves and in lions and maybe especially in primates like baboons and gorillas.
It's hilarious that something so obvious is considered worth denying, but I guess it's an example of how intellectualization can be used to exploit psychological weakness.
> The simple fact is that alpha males are a fact of nature. In wolves and in lions
Dude, you are literally responding to someone arguing that alphas are real with an article that completely disproves your thesis.
This isn't even a new revelation. Biologists have long known that the whole "wolf alpha" thing was BS.
But further, we aren't wolves, we aren't lions. Male lions taking over a pride will murder all the cubs, should we? Female Cynomolgus monkeys will have sex with every male in the troupe so as to confuse who that father is of the offspring, should we?
No species of animal is the same and there are no "norms" in the animal kingdom.
Nothing more beta than confidently spouting BS without taking the time to research your own positions.
This myth has several things that well-designed misinformation needs in order to supplant good information:
1) it fits into existing worldviews - the myth of the alpha validates people continuing to do what they want to do and what they've always done. it's a lot easier to accept information that tells you that you and the systems with which you're already familiar and comfortable are correct
2) it's intuitive to understand - "the big guy kicks the crap out of the little guys and takes all their stuff" is not something that has any sharp edges to snag unwary intellects. We've all seen this system at work. Also the popular understanding of evolution at the time was that competition happened at the level of the organism, which dovetails nicely with this theory of competition and dominance where our more current understanding of competition at the level of the gene complex introduces the possibility of cooperation and even self-sacrifice as valid survival strategies.
3) it trended in the same direction as society at the time - the book came out in 1970, about the same time that we started trending toward neoliberalism which is a hyperindividualistic, hypercompetitive worldview. If you like neoliberalism then this is why you like it, and if you don't this is why you don't. This means that as this idea was becoming more and more well-known there was a lot of room for it in the emerging zeitgeist. It's the political and sociological equivalent to 1, but with significance added by people who were already dedicated to engineering our culture in that direction in the first place latching onto this idea because it indicates that they're so correct that the whole world is already designed around principles of individualism and competition.
Well put, but the countermeme ("Hey did you hear that the alpha wolf thing was bullshit?") seems to be as popular or moreso than what it's displacing. I did some light googling yesterday to see if I could find any references of "alpha wolf" before the 40s, and all I could find was page after page of articles exactly like TFA.
I think the same reasoning applies - it is vague and easy to apply and people want it to be true - just for different people.
This is my thought. I have no attachment to the idea, I've been comfortably and happily married for years. But dismissing the idea of "an alpha" among animals seems stupid based on one study. Isn't this the case among gorillas, lions, etc? And it apparently is the truth even among wolves in certain circumstances as the study points out. The OP should apply the same logic to interrogate his own motivated reasoning.
I think the truth is in the middle: people took what they wanted from the study in the 40s, and people are taking what they want from the updated study as well. Worse, the topic seems to be popular enough that it's being used as seo spam now. At this point, if someone with a deep understanding of both wolf behavior and human behavior were to review all available data, think deeply on the subject, draw meaningful and valuable insights, and write a popular essay conveying them, I don't know how I'd find it among all the dross.
I guess it has a life of its own now. Seems like a good example of the semiotics concept of the signifier becoming disconnected from the signified: a heated debate over the finer points of wolf pack social dynamics being carried out by people with no particular knowledge of or interest in wolves.
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned.
What sometimes happens is that people use flawed reasoning to arrive to correct conclusions. Has it ever happened to you that you made a mistake but then you made another mistake and these two cancelled each other out? My take is, wolves might or might not have an alpha male, that is completely irrelevant, but if so many people subscribe to the idea, then there must be something true about it. In particular, most human societies are highly hierarchical. Heck, "the land of free" elects a new alpha male every four years, many other countries don't even bother holding elections.
> The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in.
Just because a concept cannot be easily defined it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Example: tell me what is consciousnesses.
> It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
This way of thinking is extremely common. When people face a concept they don't like, they just deny it. Otherwise their belief system would turn out to be incomplete.
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned. It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
Grifters and people selling right-wing politics have figured out how to market to male insecurity. They're selling politicians of course but also quack supplements, self-help nonsense, masculinity gurus, hilarious "boot camps" where you spend tens of thousands to have some dumbass yell at you, etc. All that stuff will leave you still insecure, and with less money.
Andrew Tate is probably the undisputed master of the alpha male grift. He's known as an abuser of women, and he is, but really men are his main marks. In a way part of his grift is to make his marks utterly repulsive to most women, keeping them alone and insecure and customers.
Sure, but don't lose sight of the fact that female insecurity has been leveraged and marketed to as well, for pretty much forever. Fashion, makeup, beauty standards -- flip through a magazine and look at the ads, and think about what the ads are suggesting the reader needs or would benefit from, and further think about whether the reader will be more or less insecure afterwards.
(And male insecurity has always been a target. Don't let that bully kick sand at you at the beach! But I agree that the targeting has recently been vastly more tuned and optimized and the most egregious forms have become socially acceptable.)
That's what I was getting at -- historically female insecurity has been more aggressively targeted, but that's been changing. I now see all kinds of marketing and propaganda tilted toward male insecurity, a lot more than I remember.
I often like to sum it up as: "Thinking gangs observed in prison represent human households."
This goes along with an imagined mockumentary, narrated by a David Attenborough figure, ex: "In the living room, a confrontation is brewing. The Big Boss has informed the bottom-tier Henchmen Homies that it is time for lights-out, but they are not ready to leave the television and they resent the privileges of the older Made Man, who is permitted to remain. This is a problem for the Big Boss, since directly punishing them might undermine his claim to control the group as a whole. Fortunately for him, his Enforcer is arriving from the kitchen, attracted by the noise..."
When I was younger I made a switch from IT to teaching at elementary. One of the teachers that guided me, hinted to watch series about a dog trainer to see how he takes the lead, what happens between those. Although I respect that man, that really didn't resonate with me, realizing that I wouldn't want to learn that way; so I don't want to teach that way.
This article explains a lot better how I feel about this than I was able to 15 years ago.
I'm also curious. When I first taught some younger kids I went in thinking they were like little people... that did not work well.
When I instead started to treat them as glorified chimps, everything went better for them and for me.
In the meantime I'm still somehow expecting that my children will behave like little people... Haha, humans really suck at learning, even from our own experiences.
Interesting. In my dealings with younger (and older) kids, thinking of them as little people seems to work well. Little, fully complete people, with many parts dramatically simpler (and more straightforward) than adults.
But then, I also think of adults as glorified chimps. Many parts are somewhat more complex -- though if you look closely enough, you'll see that much of the complexity is more of a veneer than anything deep.
Basic human nature shows through more with kids. Much of human nature is animal nature. Growing up seems to be mostly about setting those impulses against each other and delaying, suppressing, and avoiding the manifestations. In the process, we convince ourselves that we've had earth-shaking fundamental realizations about Truth and Beauty and Morality that lesser beings like children could never comprehend, as we go about our day with a sippy cup of caffeine in one hand, capturing the value that others have created as we lie and deceive to advance our supposedly noble goals, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the herd.
I have a child and I'll be honest it was only when she was like 5 that I'd say that she was more complex than a dog. Small children cannot be reasoned with, only bribed and given sufficient motivation or demotivation via a carefully balanced set of prizes and punishments.
After that she could be reasoned with, but had reduced ability to keep to her intention long term due to lack of experience and inability to imagine outcomes, so a lot of teaching an early elementary schooler involves setting up experiments to demonstrate the wisdom or lack of wisdom in particular actions. At least in my parenting. I imagine this is what is meant.
Yip, pretty much exactly this. It's easy to get confused because they have all the makings of a person, but their minds are just still extremely underdeveloped.
For a silly example in teaching chess - a typical issue is kids moving way too fast. You can explain to them why it's bad, and they understand. They can then even show you exact moments where they really hurt themselves from moving too quickly, and so on.
So after this you think to yourself - 'I did a great job. He not only knows not to do this, but more importantly - why.' Then next game he's right back to playing like he starts with 10 seconds on his clock.
So then - ok forget all the logic stuff. Each move I want you to literally sit on your hands for at least 10 seconds before moving. And suddenly - the problem is resolved.
> schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.
The qualifier some needs to be applied to that too. None of the schools I have any personal knowledge of in the UK or Norway bear (or bore in the case of my own childhood) the slightest resemblance to a prison. Well, there was one. I accompanied a colleague in the US when he picked up his daughter at the end of the school day, I was astonished to find that he had to present himself at a reception desk that was guarding locked doors that were the only way in and out.
It is not about having bars and armed guards, it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc.
A lot of this applies to some other highly disciplined environments such as the military too, but it is not the norm for most of us (and the military volunteer to be there).
The physical and security aspects of a school in the UK are not like a prison, but the social and discipline aspects are. More so at some schools than others and I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be.
> I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be
I grew up in a poor rural area and my wife an upper class coastal community, both in the USA. It’s amazing to compare and contrast our public school experiences. I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity- I still feel terror remembering it decades later. Even the lessons were nonsense propaganda- science classes literally focused on creationism, history class on “states rights,” etc. She was in a playful relaxing environment that included regular upper class leisure activities like sailing, skiing, and horseback riding, and had well equipped science labs with teachers that were passionate about science.
While I didn't go to more wealthy schools as a child, I grew up in a 'middle class to poorish' rural area in the midwest and moved to a poorish area in the south.
I'll use your own words to describe the change in the experience
>I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity-
I got the full 'the science teacher is the bully coach and believes the world was created 6000 years ago, and if you were one of the kids they liked you could commit crimes, and you were not liked then crimes could be committed against you' experience.
At least in the UK creationism is a rarity. The huge difference between good and bad schools exists though.
My kids were home educated up to 16 and then went to a sixth form college (school for 16 to 18 year olds) that is pretty good and well funded with some really good teachers (the physics teachers are outstanding - one that taught by older daughter now works for CERN, the head of department has a PhD, and they are all passionate about the subject). its not immune from league table pressure, the curse of education in the UK.
It is probably more about the difference between women and men experience growing up. Women usually do not face violence directly. They face other problems though.
Don't believe for a second that growing up in an upper class environment does not have social dynamics. I grew up in one in Europe. In an upper class school there are bullies as bad as you could find in a lower class one, probably worse, because they have resources and connections to create harm. And sometimes their parents are worse than them.
Do not idealise what you have not live. You could go skiing and they can choke with the ski poles. This happened to one of my friends because he criticised one guy.
You are not understanding the extent of violence and abuse I am talking about, and how it was systematically led and encouraged by the teachers and staff. I’m not talking about just bullies being at the school- or normal boys dominance and fighting - of course that can happen anywhere.
Despite going to a poor school, my family was well off, and I had personal experience with other environments including Boy Scouts, summer camps, etc. that still included normal social dynamics between boys with plenty of fighting, etc. but that is absolutely nothing like what I am describing above.
> it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc.
What do you make of the recent claim that something like 20-30% of people are fundamentally authoritarian in nature and want these fixed hierarchies and routines?
not solely through violence. alpha chimps are often big, but not necessarily the biggest.
best way I've heard it explained: the alpha chimp usually does the most grooming of other chimps of any of the males in the troop.
they're out there making deals and building relationships. tough guys can try to overpower those so the top chimp also gotta be tough enough to stand up, but it's as much about relationships as it is about muscles
> their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence
Correct. A book on Chimpanzees was connected to human nature by a reviewer in the Chicago Tribune, a 1999 Time article and the obviously totally-scientific pick-up book The Game [1].
Everywhere where you are unhappy and/or uncomfortable is a prison for yourself. It could be a football stadion where some weird guy has made you the mocking target.
another analogy would be: aliens abducting a bunch of humans and recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment and write up on human society based on that, which ends-up reshaping alien culture.
I think they are, but causality is the other way around. A lot of gang originate from prison. Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime?
Street gangs are really fascinating, and aren't, like, "well-oiled crime machines" in general.
Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down.
The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them.
As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs.
So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members.
You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang.
Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime.
Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.
It's fairly common historically for gangs to arise out of organized communal self-defense that itself happens in response to some threat. Once the threat is gone, the structure remains in place and members keep looking for ways to apply their newly acquired skills, with protection racket being a popular choice.
You go to prison and have your rights stripped away and you pretty much have nothing. As much as gangs use violence they also provide protection and friendship.
Now you get out of prison and you have that big old criminal stain on your record. You're having trouble surviving and making enough, but you remember your new gang friends tell you to find a guy when you're out and he can help you. Congratulations, the circle is complete.
The flaw with the OP's article is that Alphas are not only observed in captive wolves. They are observed in MANY wild animal groups and even observed among humans.
I mean the first thing that comes to mind is lions and gorillas. Also CEOs in human societies. I mean are they not alphas? Don't we structure our teams according to leaders? Alphas litter human society and organizations. I feel the author is blind not to be able to see the highly pyramidal structure of alphas that encompasses every facet of human culture.
It seems clear in all your replies here that you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’, and as a somewhat relative term (like, my boss is an alpha to me, and a beta to their boss). Given your definition, of course it’s obvious that it apples to many facets of human society. Leaders and followers are all around us.
But in popular discourse there’s also a sense of ‘alphas’ getting into their position by violence or assholery that I think your definition is missing.
Even in scientific discourse, there is the idea that ‘alphas’ must gain their position by dominance - not by other methods (prestige, age, etc).
People use words in different ways, so in a way your definition is as good as any other, but (as with anything language related) you can’t really insist on it if others think it means something different and you want to have reasonable conversations with them (ironically, insisting on your definition seems like an attempt to assert dominance).
Edit: removed some snark, sorry. But I’ll also add: the article uses the scientific usage I mentioned above: wild real wolf pack ‘leaders’ aren’t ‘alphas’ because they don’t maintain their position by dominating the other wolves.
The claim that "alpha" is defined as requiring violence or assholery is incorrect, and this is backed by scientific studies, dictionary definitions, and leadership psychology research. Here’s why:
1. Official Dictionary Definitions
Oxford English Dictionary (OED):
Alpha (in social contexts):
"A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Oxford English Dictionary - Alpha Definition
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Alpha (as in 'Alpha Male/Female'):
"The most dominant, powerful, or assertive person in a particular group."
Merriam-Webster - Alpha Definition
Nowhere in these definitions does it state that an alpha must use violence or aggression to gain dominance.
2. Scientific Studies on Leadership & Alpha Behavior
Study: Dominance Hierarchies in Social Animals
Dugatkin, L. A. (1997). "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies." Behavioral Ecology, 8(5), 583-587.
"Dominance hierarchies in animal and human groups are often established through social signaling, resource control, and cooperation rather than brute force."
Dugatkin, 1997
Study: Leadership Without Aggression in the Animal Kingdom
Smith, J. E. et al. (2016). "Obligate Sociality Without Cooperation: Insights From Other Taxa." Behavioral Ecology, 27(1), 1-14.
"Alphas are often those who exhibit superior social intelligence, cooperation, and decision-making ability rather than reliance on aggressive behaviors."
Smith et al., 2016
These studies explicitly state that alphas do NOT require violence to gain or maintain their status.
3. Leadership Psychology: Alphas Lead Without Coercion
Goleman, D. (1995). "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." Bantam Books.
"True leaders, or ‘alphas’ in human social dynamics, are those who possess high emotional intelligence, resilience, and ability to influence without coercion."
Goleman, 1995
Bass, B. M. (1990). "From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision." Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19-31.
"Successful leadership is based on vision, respect, and strategy. Coercion and force are indicative of weak leadership rather than true dominance."
Bass, 1990
These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
4. Debunking the Claim That "Alpha" = Violence
L. David Mech (1999). "Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs."
"The term 'alpha' is often misunderstood. In both animals and humans, successful leadership is based on intelligence, decision-making ability, and social bonding—not brute force."
Mech, 1999
This refutes the claim that alpha = inherently violent.
Final Conclusion: The Definition of "Alpha" Does NOT Require Violence
Dictionaries define "alpha" as dominance through leadership, not necessarily aggression.
Scientific studies show that dominance in social animals is often achieved through cooperation and intelligence.
Leadership psychology research confirms that true human "alphas" lead through respect and influence, not assholery.
The idea that "alpha" = "violent dictator" is a pop culture myth, not backed by science or formal definitions.
> These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
No? Look:
Your Merriam-Webster quote (although I can't find it online)
"the most dominant, powerful, or assertive person"
That's not becoming a leader by being helpful and getting people's trust.
It's instead dominance and assertiveness, that's something else.
I think you mistakenly what to have the word "alpha" mean the same thing as "leader". But I think that's not how people in general look at these words.
I just checked your #2 Dugatkin. I am only able to access the abstract [0] (though interested in the full article as you appear to be quoting from part of it which is not publicly available).
It does not at all represent itself as even taking a specific side on the meaning of "alpha" let alone testify to an academic consensus of any decisive proof one way or the other. It doesn't even have anything to do with the study itself at all.
The line you quoted seems more like an aside. The study was apparently about a simulated game theoretic model, and even refers to the units in the simulation as "combatants". It is an attempt to model and simulate "winner effects" and "loser effects" in tandem over time. It's mostly interested in contrasting this approach with models that only deal with "winner effects" or "loser effects" but not their simultaneous dynamics.
It ends with a modest expression of hope to spur future similar studies and is not even pretending to venture anything like a final definition of "alpha", let alone represent the full weight of academic consensus on that question. Citing it for that purpose feels like drive-by quote mining.
Dugatkin, "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies" was an interesting read this morning. Thanks for the reference.
The main thing I take away from the paper is that (in computer simulations) bigger winner effects and bigger loser effects lead to strongly defined hierarchies. Fewer subjects have ambiguous positions.
I'm not sure the paper speaks much to which strategies (e.g. violence vs cooperation) are more common or effective.
Right, it seems to entirely abstract away the nature of the interactions themselves, and is modeling how changes to position in hierarchy unfold over time with repeated wins or losses. It's not speaking to the nature of the interaction itself, and so not really taking sides on whether it does or doesn't involve such things as force, toughness, etc.
Violence is an effective strategy. One of many. It's not stable but it has been used successfully in human history. The thing is you can't have a society that's constantly violent all the time forever and ever. Those tend to self select via natural selection.
You can have societies be temporarily violent like how Americans slaughtered and killed Native Americans and took over the continent. The formation of the USA comes from this type of effective violence. Who would be the alphas in this case? the native americans? Or the ones that invaded? I know I'm a bit on the nose here, but this is just reality.
Violence is like a key on a piano. You were born with it. You can choose not to play that note, but it is always there, it is never not there.
You can choose to play great melodies without the violence note. You can choose to play melodies with the violence note. You can be forced in a corner and have no option but to hammer the violence key until the strings scream.
> Official Dictionary Definitions Oxford English Dictionary (OED): Alpha (in social contexts): "A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Do you have a link for this definition? I'm unable to find it or the one you attribute to Merriam-Webster on their websites.
(Their websites are shit. I'm curious about the dates around those definitions.)
I mean that's all true enough, but their point, at least narrowly read as a general observation about animals, stands. There are ample examples in nature of dominance hierarchies, even if wolves aren't one of them.
Of course, as you note, looking to these examples as a basis for a personal ethos for tough guy psychology is error riddled in so many ways you could write a book unpacking it all. (E.g. why choose other animals remote from the lineage of apes to which we belong, why for that matter not just study humans in the first place, why hitch any ethos to what happens in nature, why not look at what it says about people who seem to need to indulge in this search, etc.)
It's good to show that this argument fails on its own terms with its own chosen example, but getting into that kind of back and forth risks implicitly agreeing that it would be right to think that way, should such an example be found in nature. And those examples do exist in nature even if not necessarily with wolves.
But as you noted that doesn't have anything to do with better or worse, right or wrong, and is completely lacking in self-awareness about the actual psychological dynamics that causes people to need these kinds of narratives.
> first thing that comes to mind is lions and gorillas
Better ones are chickens and horses. (Females, I believe, in both cases.)
Gorillas have a variety of social structures, only one which involves the Silverback fighting for dominance [1]. With lions, meanwhile, the females eat first [2].
> are they not alphas? Don't we structure our teams according to leaders?
Leaders, yes. Hotheads, no. The “alpha” hypothesis states that the most aggressive rises to the top.
Of course. Nobody argued aggression isn’t effective. The argument is it isn’t the effective strategy, just one among many.
> See here on what an alpha is
You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
> Also for chickens, I've raised chickens
Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
As your sources show, that isn’t necessary for leadership.
>You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
I cited two dictionaries as well.
>Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
Analogies were never part of the equation. You know they weren't. You were talking about animals explicitly not animals as an analogy. I feel you're trolling.
Those are point-in-time snapshots. The Wikipedia article expands on the term's etymology [1].
(If you can provide links to those definitions I'll help look up when they were adopted. I couldn't find the definition you quoted on Webster's website [2], for example.)
> Analogies were never part of the equation
The term is an analogy. That's the point. There was a term in animal ethology that was popularised to the point it entered mainstream use. Synonymising alpha to leadership, moreover, is even more recent and mostly occuring in American English (and now, with partisan flair).
The thing is that when someone has to work hard to seem Alpha they are instead revealing their insecurity--the need to compensate to hide vulnerability.
Some people play into that game, others see through it.
Alphas are just leaders. Whether they have vulnerabilities is orthogonal to the fact that they control and lead the pack. Whether it’s through force or pay.
Do you have a good boss that you like who’s a good person? He’s an alpha. You’re a beta if you’re under him. Do you have a boss who’s an ass hole who got pegged and raped by his uncle when he was a kid and now he’s taking all that pent up humiliation on you? Yeah he has a big vulnerability. But. He. Is. Still. An. Alpha.
It’s not a game. Games are for friend groups and kids. I’m talking about the economic engine that builds civilization itself. That engine is made up of a hierarchy of alphas and betas.
(Dominance-related) insecurity is being pathologically averse to being seen as weak, which leads to preferring dominance as form over dominance as function. If the meek hippie gets everything he wants from his wife, his neighbors, his peers, etc., and the physically impressive traditional man is ignored and rejected, then the hippie is more dominant (i.e., leading and getting what he wants) than the traditional man (even if he is abusing his wife the whole time she laughs at him).
The actually effective strategies are available to the insecure but shunned and rejected because they cannot be tolerated, creating a self-imposed impotence.
The word alpha, in almost every context I've observed, is used exclusively to refer to such dominance as form, especially in substitution for dominance as function. i.e., it is applied almost exclusively to people who are definitionally not dominant.
The only exception I have encountered is women-focused kink literature which, being fantasy, maintains that dominance as form is dominance as function so as to make sexual fantasies seem more real.
In short: you are describing a kink, not real life. Though I consider that you might be joking too; I really can't tell.
Literally you can go to the dictionary yourself and look up the definition to see how baseless your argument is.
I don't know why you people are just pulling this bs out of thin air. It can't be just BS is several people are coming from your angle despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Maybe it's just shared victimhood. Were you bullied by these types of people before?
I call it a kink because I attract women with the kink.
I'm referring to pragmatics not semantics; the use of dictionary definitions is a category error.
No, I was not bullied. People like I describe would posture, I would raise my eyebrow and wait, and then they would treat me nice and pretend it didn't happen. Dominance as form outside the bedroom is remarkably ineffective. That's why I call it dominance as form.
"When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;
When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;
When he says no, he is not a diplomat. —Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)
These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — may or may not be fair to diplomats, but are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘no’ each has a perfectly identifiable meaning, known by every speaker of English (including not very competent ones). However, as those lines illustrate, it is possible for different speakers in different circumstances to mean different things using those words. How is this possible? What’s the relationship among the meaning of words, what speakers mean when uttering those words, the particular circumstances of their utterance, their intentions, their actions, and what they manage to communicate? These are some of the questions that pragmatics tries to answer; the sort of questions that, roughly speaking, serve to characterize the field of pragmatics."[1]
If you redefine alpha to just mean "leader", then the claim that CEOs are alphas is obviously true, but also meaningless.
But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders. There's no "redefinition" going on here at all. What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I attempted to jump that gap for you, but you're not able to see it.
>But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
And he applies that to humans without considering alphas in other animal hierarchies. He implies that the entire theoretical concept of alphas comes ONLY from wolves and once he debunks wolves (with no citations) he debunks the entire concept of what an alpha is. Riiggght.
> There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders.
Yes, there is a redefinition. The context of Alpha Wolf was based on the notion of a dominance hierarchy, which does occur when unrelated wolves are put together in a confined space. In the wild though, they function more like a family, with no acts of dominance. The breeding pair still lead the pack, but not through dominance.
> What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I literally just pointed out that if you are defining alpha to mean "leader" then it's meaningless to then claim that leaders are alphas. That was the comment.
> Could you elaborate what is the meaning of “alpha”?
There isn't a fixed definition [1]. Most definitions reference dominance, e.g. Merriam-Webster [2]. (Annoyingly, dominance also has different meanings in anthropology, animal ethology, sociology and common use.)
But due to the term being relatively new, adopted from animal ethology, co-tiopted by the memeverse and now being politically charged, you're basically walking into semantic ground zero by using the term.
Have you actually read the article? He does give a citation to the same author who initially coined the term alpha wolf.
And redefining alpha to just mean leader is a redefinition, as written in the article the term originates from the alpha wolf who achieved dominance through overtly aggressive behaviour (which does not match with how wolves behave in the wild).
It's ironic that you bring up CEOs etc as proof that there's alphas, when the whole premise of the article is that recent structuring of human society is based on an this wrong view that the aggressive dominance is "natural" and what is required for leaders
The only colloquial usage I've seen is that it is someone who has the ability to demand that others perform a public display of obedience to them. Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "alpha," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "alpha," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
> Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "your leader," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "my leader," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
I think same sentiment persists when alpha->”your leader” replacement is made.
Right but the term here is used to categorize human/animal hierarchies/behavior in an objective context. No one is here projecting their alphaness onto others. Clearly.
No they are not. There are plenty of leaders who are not alphas and they lead organizations that achieve good things.
Alphas are generally just assholes who want to be leaders. They usually lead self selected friends who crave their validation and people with healthy boundaries just nope out of those systems.
The article isn't wrong about captivity/freedom, although alphas are certainly thing.
Hierarchies are naturally born out of confrontations and how they're settled, and captivity (ie scarcity) breeds confrontations. If two separate entities have opposing wants which cannot be satisfied simultaneously (ie are mutually exclusive), how do you determine who get's what they want? Well, naturally some kind of fight happens. Which either involves displays of intimidation, threats, arguments, or acts of violence (ie aggression).
Naturally, living organisms value life and consider risks which threaten their livelihood, and so, these situations are always an assessment of wants, such as "is my want for the last piece of food, greater than my want to avoid fighting my opponent?" Or, "Am I willing to risk dying for this? Do I need this food, do I need to fight this opponent or can I get food elsewhere before dying of starvation?".
As so, animals typically use violence as a last resort for settling disputes, unless the risks are so low as to be play (ie you're certain to win). It should therefore not be surprising that captive animals (or animals backed into a corner) feel obligated to fight, as they have few alternatives to avoid confrontation. Whereas, non-captive animals, by being more free, are better able to avoid a direct confrontation, and therefore exhibit less acts of aggression.
An alpha, just happens to be those who win disputes repeatedly, and opponents or potential opponents have learned to be intimidated by them, and so cede disputes to them when they arise without fighting. A hierarchy is thus naturally formed from repeated disputes.
when companies are big enough (to where CEO actually has meaning), shareholder rights kick in, and there are many additional legal requirements; none of those require a CEO
If CEOs are the alphas, then why are some of them so submissive recently to a certain someone? The alpha male mythos tells me that these men have huge amounts of agency and power and yet...they make a big show of turning themselves into lapdogs? The Internet says thats not alpha behavior!
It's almost as if reality is more nuanced than what 4Chan taught us: CEOs have people they need to answer to, people they're scared of, and that's part of what it means to be a human.
That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.
That’s equivalent to the male on the couch watching TV with a shotgun on his lap defending his territory and the females going hunting (aka kitchen) to make the husband a sandwich.
Joking aside the males are the leaders. How do I know? They kill the kids on arrival and the females can’t do fuck shit.
> That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.*
That's a myth.
Male lions do hunt. When hunting alone and not as "heavy support" for the females, they use different strategies than the females, and do it in a different environment. I read an article from a researcher about that in particular, can't remember any context to find it quickly though.
There are many (scientific and casual) articles like that though:
I would argue that the wealthy which hold loans based on stock collateral are holding debt and not credit. US banking laws are just hiding the fact. So a number of rich people you define as alpha are not really alpha because of debt vs credit imbalance.
This means the person spending money while going through Disney World are alpha.
Bro I define an alpha as someone who leads and controls others. Someone people follow whether by will or by force or because they are paid a salary.
You’re just being pedantic. I don’t need to explain to you why people intrinsically know Elon musk is an alpha and the person going to Disney world is a beta.
To me the Alpha Mentality is just stupidity in another Yes-Man form.
Seems you hold the alpha mentality deeply and respect those you seem as alpha. By your own logic, cult leaders are alpha and should be respected.
Respect can only be earned, continuously reinforced, and lost in a single moment. Respect cannot be demanded or forcefully requested.
Watch the first episode of "Band of Brothers". Who would you want as a leader, the alpha, one with power, Captain Herbert Sobel or 2nd Lutenaint Richard Winters, the one without power?
Sure HNers hate Elon for various reasons. But overall some random dude who goes to disney world versus A billionaire who caught a rocket and makes stupid tweets online.... Let's be real here about what "society" defines as alpha, not some HNers backwater opinion.
ANd even that HNer knows his contrary opinion is backwater. Trump and Elon get a lot of hate, but they are leaders on the apex of the human status hierarchy.
When I think of “leaders of the human status hierarchy”, I do not think of a man who spends his entire day online trolling people, regardless of whether he is worth billions or not. Similarly, I don’t picture a guy that wears lifts because he is ashamed of his height, or who paints his face orange, to be that “apex” either.
For some public companies retail share holders also have to be groveled to.
I don't have an overall point here other than that power isn't as simple as some people want it to be. You command a ship until there's a mutiny. There are hierarchies, but that's only one way of slicing things. It's more about a set of several feedback loops that nobody explicitly understands.
Of course it’s not simple. But alphas and betas are intrinsic to society and that’s my point.
You will see that society converges towards alphas. There have been attempts to make everything egalitarian but it doesn’t last and alphas pop up everywhere. Heck you can’t even make a purely voting society where society votes on everything. Instead everyone votes for an alpha. Aka trump.
I don’t like your tone. When you say not everyone behaves like Americans you sound like you’re implying superiority as if Americans don’t behave well and I have to conform to your version of good behavior. Change your tone or I won’t continue with you.
For a good primer on hierarchy dynamics in human systems, I recommend Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.
In what Logan calls stage 3 leadership, organizations cluster around individual “rockstar” people - and this is the vast majority of human organizations.. they estimate 80%.
In Stage 4, it’s all rockstar people organized around values vs. a person.
You certainly still have people who have authority through competency, but people aren’t granted authority based purely on “position”.
Stage 4 culture are the best in the world, and learning how to build them is a worthwhile skill.
bunch of submissive in the sheets CEOs? as long as we're operating on feelings and emotions here
the whole thing is dimwitted bullshit psychological theory
Surprised not to see David Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything" recommended yet in a thread like this.
It details how "pre-modern" societies functioned based on the available archaeological and anthropological evidence we have, and one of its key findings is just how much human history conflicts with narratives like "the alpha myth". It also goes into detail about how we ended up with so many social narratives like it that just don't have any justifiable precedent.
this is way above the audience. this conversation is unfortunately like talking about garbage collector algorithms in different architectures, to social science grads.
It's great to post relevant and informative links, but please do it without putting down others. If you're participating here, you're as much the community as anyone else is.
I've had that (The Burnout Society) on my to-read list for awhile, do you recommend it?
I think the core thesis is spot on from what I've seen of discussions, and am looking to decide which aspects of ambition are my own, and which have I have accepted unconsciously.
Coincidentally, I actually re-read The Burnout Society a few months ago while I was listening to The Dawn of Everything.
I strongly recommend The Burnout Society, though I think it tackles these issues from a different perspective: "how we compromise ourselves in service of the (false) personal and societal narratives we've constructed".
A more direct line to The Dawn of Everything in the sense of "how did we construct these narratives in the first place?" would probably be Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. Coincidentally for this thread, it also includes a chapter on the results of real wolf domestication studies (and how it affects animal behaviour) in past decades.
its good but very "pop". if you're already in the matter, either deep dive on papers not books from Graeber or go to the still verry relevant source of all this, wich i consider to be Gramsci.
I might not be the best possible version of myself but I am at least a release candidate, and therefore have transceded the concepts of „alpha male“ and „beta male“.
Some cowboy developer pushed me to prod despite a glaring beta tag and a plethora of known critical bugs. Yet here I am, 45 minors later with the beta tag still there, delivering measurable value to all my users.
I admit to being rude and to being a very bad builder myself.
But the article is bad. Just about every piece of evidence has some sort of issue. Correlation-causation, or not enough data, or just assumptions. The wolf stuff (seems to be) based on only 2 observations. The author cites big tech in CA, but then describes a single clothing company that has a high random metric that is supposedly an accurate indicator of all of the above.
And the connections between arguments are not even that good. Skimming over it, I wasn't sure what the article's point was.
As for the conclusion, the vague words on what could be done are the kind of stuff everyone is trying anyway for other reasons, and it isn't (?) working.
Alphas aren't only observed in captive wolves. They are observed in MANY MANY animal groups.
I think the full picture isn't some liberal idea where everyone lives in harmony and can work together for the common good without the weakest link ever getting left behind.
The truth is it's a bit of both. We live in a world where it's dog eat dog but also companionship and working together are BOTH effective strategies for survival. Most humans are programmed to be able to handle both modes of survival . Depending on circumstance one strategy often becomes critical for survival. For example: if you're in captivity or aka a setting with very very limited resources the alpha strategy works best.
Of course no citations for me either. But I think it's quite clear the author is biased.
You’re right. Antarctic penguins and walruses are good examples of this. Penguin females go hunting, while the males hatch eggs and rear the young till the females return. Walrus males, OTOH, absolutely dominate other walrus males, and keep a harem of females.
But who cares? Humans are more closely related to primates than other animals, who exhibit all kinds of different behaviors across species. I am not sure why we’re trying to model human behaviors from wolves at all.
In fact, human advanced cognitive development is unique amongst the entirety of the animal kingdom, so it’s okay if humans have behaviors which are unique just to us, and are unobserved in other animals.
There’s a recent book, “Bitch: On the Female of the Species” by Lucy Cooke, which specifically targets the traditional “strong males weak females is the natural order” trope. It’s brilliantly written, comprehensive in its dismantling of the concept, and a very fun read (side note: I have a habit of reading in bars, and this one got a lot of looks)
The original researcher did correct the record about what entails the alpha wolf in a natural setting, noting that pack leadership was usually based upon familial group dynamics, instead of the cliche biggest and strongest that beat down opponents, but in pop science this correction went too far, basically discounting the idea of an alpha wolf altogether. In virtually every discussion about this myth people will regurgitate the notion that there is no alpha.
But...there is. He never claimed there wasn't an alpha. Just that the selection among a group of wolves forced together differs from a group of wolves in a natural setting.
So Tony Soprano was the alpha of the crime family even though many other characters were likely stronger, crazier, etc. He had the backing of so many people that they knew that his bark had bite, even if it wasn't from him directly.
> noting that pack leadership was usually based upon familial group dynamics, instead of the cliche biggest and strongest that beat down opponents
So, sounds like if the author read the study more closely and continued with his idea of basing human society around dog society we should structure society as a hereditary monarchy rather than rule by warrior kings.
Did anyone consider that our society IS artificial conditions? Not sure about you all, but western society feels much more akin to a zoo than the wilderness.
That you can certainly opt in to artificial nonsense, as wholeheartedly and completely as you want, doesn’t mean society is artificial. It just means that’s the part you’ve decided to live your life in.
C’mon now, you know what he means. Or you’ve got a decent idea of what he might mean.
People are beginning to consider that the most pervasive aspects of society—parts that you don’t have a choice whether you’re a part of it or confronted by it—are social constructs, and that humans are constrained in what they’re allowed to believe in and how to come to terms with those beliefs amongst one another.
This is what I've been leaning towards after initially renouncing the experiment for its arbitrary nature. "Alpha" behaviour emerge in zero-sum/artificial scarcity situations, yet contemporary society is full of zero-sum situations and artificial scarcity due to market inefficiency and gatekeeping. It's not just Western society either. If anything, Western-aligned industrialized societies experience far less scarcity. So the behavioural pattern shouldn't be entirely dismissed as pseudoscience, but worthy of critical inspection and reference.
> Alpha" behavior emerge in zero-sum/artificial scarcity situations
Zero-sum, yes, but why only artificial scarcity? It seems like this would arise in a natural situation as well... Even if you lived on abundantly producing land that is not (yet) heavily populated there is still going to be mate competition.
> Instead of ruling from above, he built a flat structure where decisions emerge from collaboration.
I've also seen the flip-side of this - where due to the fact that there is no established hierarchy, you spend inordinate amounts of time welding entirely disparate architectures together since every team was cowboy coding and doing their own thing.
Also anecdotally, I've never once experienced this Type-A prima donna alpha engineer but I've had absolutely zero interest in working for a FAANG. Every engineer I've ever worked with was pretty easy-going.
Ha, Ha; True. For some reason people don't want to face reality but want to believe in fancies/stories which they have picked up from surrounding society.
The highest-ranking chimpanzee in a group is the alpha-male. These males climb their way to the top of the chimpanzee hierarchy, and the ways they choose to do so can differ with the personality of the individual leader. Take two of the alpha males observed in Gombe, Frodo and Freud, for instance. Though they were brothers, each chimp had a very different leadership style. While Freud maintained control through fostering strong alliances and grooming those he wanted to keep under his command, Frodo relied heavily on aggression and brute strength.
> Do we use alpha male gorillas to explain the concept?
We should use chimpanzees. The popular definition evolved pretty much indepdenently of the science, unfortunately [1].
Management texts have tried toning this down, particularly in the gender-equality years. At its nonsensical limit one wound up with alpha = leader, which is tautologically useless as a tool for explaining leadership.
The term probably belongs in a bin. There are deep social lessons we can learn from observing chimpanzees. (Or even wolves.) But they're not going to condense into a single term, certainly not one that's been through the 4chan and partisan ringers. Even among chimpanzees, we see a variety of tactics used to achieve dominance, including groups of chimps banding together to topple a leader.
I love the dialectical equivalency here, Feels exactly accurate. At least 4chan plays you laugh you lose, federal politics seems to omit the first half.
> dominance, including groups of chimps
Indeed one of the most fascinating lessons. "Alpha" by force is almost tautologically impossible; leadership is built on inspiration and willfullness.
Even within apes the variance is wide enough that I question the value in drawing any conclusions about human nature, especially for laypeople. Why chimpanzees and not bonobos who are equally close relatives to humans but whose social structure is matriarchal, non-territorial, and considerably less violent?
There is such myriad behavior in the animal kingdom that drawing insight into human social structure from it seems like it is more often a Rorschach test than it is a scientific exercise.
And the gorillas and chimpanzees studied are not in captivity.
Obviously not every species exhibits this, and the ones that do don't exhibit it all the time. But the article acts like the concept has been discredited when that is not the case at all.
As well established as dominance hierarchies are, they aren't the only social structure, and just as this article explains, it's rather ironic that in the case for wolves, that isn't the prevailing social structure in their natural setting. That wolves have become the prevailing reference point for the concept, is metaphorical on a lot of levels.
The discrediting is of the inevitability of its all-encompassing effects. It can be present without needing to be defended or prevent the Alpha from caring for its young.
Humans don't want to be chimps though, they want to be wolves. Or lions. Or eagles. That sort of thing. So a narrative about strong wolves dominating weaker wolves is gonna catch on like wildfire and you can bet your house on that.
Is this like how middle management reportedly wouldn't be caught dead dressing like the janitor, but super rich people supposedly dress like the janitor in order to not look like middle management?
This sounds like Scott Alexander's "Fashion explained with cellular automata" article, which was neat but probably not what OP was referring to and certainly not related to TFA in any way I can see. Still a good read tho.
The fact that the evidence doesn't exist doesn't imply the phenomenon doesn't exist?
Remind me, why gorillas and not chimps? Why chimps and not bonobos? Why assume that two related species with completely different environmental niches must share a social structure?
> The fact that the evidence doesn't exist doesn't imply the phenomenon doesn't exist?
Wolves were never meant to be evidence. They were a model, a metaphor.
I wonder how many people who complain about "believing the myth of alpha wolves" are the same people who defend astrology as a "useful way of thinking, whether it's true or not".
Until it was debunked, people thought that the alpha/beta/omega nonsense was the actual natural social order of wolves. Some people then borrowed that as a metaphor.
Right, "alpha" means a lot of things in ethology, but the "alpha/beta/gamma" categorization that took hold in reactionary circles was specifically derived from the wolf studies. "Some individuals tend to be more socially dominant" is not controversial.
> Until it was debunked, people thought that the alpha/beta/omega nonsense was the actual natural social order of wolves.
Some wolf biologists thought that, sure. But that obviously wasn't and isn't any kind of evidence about human sociology (and conversely nor is the fact that it isn't).
> defend astrology as a "useful way of thinking, whether it's true or not".
I wonder how many people defend mind palaces as a "useful way of thinking, whether it's true or not".
Historically speaking, that's all astrology was. Research has indeed shown that people who practice astrology are better at remembering details about people in their lives. Astrology is just a mind palace that allows them to more easily memorize and organize useful facts about the people in their social networks
Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Baboons are similar in their social structures with the dominant alpha males. Bonobos are different with it being matriarchal and conflict resolution being less violent.
Our closest cousins are actually bonobos (or at least they are as close to us as chimpanzees are), which don't have this type of hierarchy. Regardless, group social hierarchies don't necessarily translate even between closely related species, such as chimps and bonobos, so there is no reason whatsoever to extend them from some ape to humans.
> The fact the wolf alpha male theory was wrong doesn't imply we don't have alpha dominance for men.
It isn't wrong. The headline is intentionally misleading and the article is just woke nonsense. Read it for yourself.
What the article is really saying that the alpha in a zoo wolfpack is different than an alpha in a wild wolfpack because a zoo wolfpack is between non-related wolves whilest in the wild, wolfpacks are composed of family members ( alpha father/alpha mother and children ).
There are alpha in wolf packs ( zoos and wild ). Just like in a human family the father/mother are alphas while in a gang, the alpha is usually a non-related individual.
The "myth" isn't that the alpha doesn't exist. The "myth" is about the relation of the alpha to the rest of the pack.
I feel like the term "alpha" is deeply problematic since different people use it to mean completely different things.
Many people associate it with the toxic traits of dominating others through aggression. While other's use it to reference a healthy, good, strong, well developed and balanced individual who helps others.
I think we need new terms for these things so we can start differentiate them.
I think the path forward requires rejecting appeals to nature.
"Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.
If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved." ~ Chesterton
I feel that rather than disproving the alpha myth, this emphasizes that it works well in cages.
What makes a cage? I'd say something where sustainability is a factor - there are limited leads, limited work, limited territory. People slow down otherwise they become too productive, deplete the work available, and get laid off. Hierarchies evolve around controlling these limited resources. All the danger is internal. There's constant resources coming in from god knows where, so budgeting takes priority over hunting.
Wasn't there a guy who did the "rats prefer cocaine to food" study but without having the rats isolated in individual cages, and it turns out that no, they don't actually prefer cocaine to food when they aren't (essentially) in solitary?
You’re talking about the Rat Park study. That one is also controversial and hasn’t successfully replicated. Personally I think the general idea of a connection between emotional trauma and addiction is pretty obvious, but also a but more complex than the Rat Park study implies or assumes.
To be clear, lots of studies have shown that animals in richer environments do less drugs; though the effect doesn't seem to be as strong as Alexander claimed.
>In their natural habitat, wolf packs operated nothing like the prison-yard dynamics he'd observed in the zoo.
Human's aren't in their natural habit most of the time either. "Prison-yard dynamics" is how the public education system functions. This is where our children are socialized.
High school is more complex as there is a life outside it where other dynamics can be observed. At least that's what I noticed and it made me realize that the popularity contest in high school was a farce.
> it made me realize that the popularity contest in high school was a farce.
Observing outside life has led me to conclude that the high school popularity contest, is, in fact, the most authentic, freest form of human social behavior.
I agree 100%. I could only see it in the last year or two: Instagram allows people to maintain high school popularity in adult life. Before Insta, those people faded into oblivion because there was no global platform to amplify their good looks or likeable personality. (There were still popular, but in much smaller social circles.) After Insta, "high school popular" people can maintain it indefinitely.
I don't disagree of course. And this is less a critique of the individual men vs our current social structure. A good deal of my work is in helping people free themselves, however, this wouldn't be necessary had it not been a life long project of incarceration.
are we equating homeschooling to unschooled now? while there are definitely people claiming homeschool while just as a cover for not being in school, that doesn't mean that all homeschool is not educating the kids.
I appreciated a point I saw a few months ago about how the wolf-derived alpha/beta/etc stuff is a safe way for cis men to experiment with gender identity without risking being labeled queer by other men and having to confront harassment.
I've pondered alpha male theory for a 5 years before having a solid conclusion before or against it. I rejected it. But yea, I really was that socially clueless, it took me 5 years as a late teen of observing and thinking about it to understand that life is more complicated than that and that the idea of alpha males is ridiculous, especially since I saw strong evidence on the contrary (i.e. "beta behaviors" and still having an amazing dating life, etc.).
If the Alpha Wolf is a myth, it is also a myth that the concept was bought to popular imagination by Rudolf Schenkel and L. David Mech between the 1940 and 1970s.
Jack London's gold rush books explore this concept in detail, the first of which, Call of the Wild, was published in 1903. These were very popular books, then and still today.
The alpha wolf concept was in public psyche at least in the early 1900s, but probably earlier too. I don't think it is likely that London invented this myth himself and it existed earlier.
Right. The myth actually originates from Social Darwinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism which was what influenced Jack London's thinking (see "The Call of the Wild", "White Fang" etc.) but at the same time he was also a Socialist (see "The Iron Heel", "The People of the Abyss" etc.) See his "views" section here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London#Views
1. There's still other species where an "alpha" exists.
2. Even if there's no other species where an "alpha" exists, what forbids us from it being a human thing? No that I want to look up to a mere mortal "alpha" e.g. dictators. Only real alpha is Christ.
3. There's always an alpha in friend groups, I've seen it, should I pluck out my eyes as they're lying to me? Heck no. Doesn't mean the women in the friend group took turns doing you know what to his you know what. An alpha is simple a leader, online manosphere groups took it to the extreme of being "the guy that gets most girls" but in truth being known helps with that whole thing.
4. Even my previous 3 points didn't resonate with you, it's just an allegory, I don't know why this particular alpha thing has hit a nerve with some many people, that even whole ass articles have been written up against it, what is the problem with men aspiring to be better? An alpha shares his spoils anyways, in Lions in Hyenas in Coyotes, etc.
Seems like it's fair to assume, both canines and humans are highly adaptable, and we behave the way we need to in the environment we're in. My dog has never shown me anything except love and compassion, and that gets him the best living conditions, back scratches and the tastiest food.
> Seems like it's fair to assume, both canines and humans are highly adaptable, and we behave the way we need to in the environment we're in.
If that were as true as you seem to be suggesting, there would be no difference between dogs and wolves when the latter are kept as pets, which is clearly false.
If the animals are spread over a wide area, where they don't have to compete for territory or resources with each other, of course the dominant behaviors won't rear themselves.
You need the right conditions to repro the behavior.
E.g. for starters, you cannot study one wolf in isolation from other wolves, right? You need at least two for one to dominate the other, and they can't be miles apart such that they never meet.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the "alpha myth" is actually true as it pertains to humans, and the most aggressive and dominating ones rise to the top.
Now look around you. Who are those people at the top of your society who unironically refer to themselves as "alphas" and embrace all the rhetoric around that, and what kind of world do they create around them?
Something similar happened with models for addiction in rats (which were extrapolated to humans)
It turned out that rats that live in a nice environment, with plenty of activities and social spaces (not an ugly, mostly empty cage), don’t become addicted
The Internet loves the Rat Park experiment, but it never replicated and should be considered just as bogus as all the other stuff in social psych which hasn't survived the replication crisis.
It's fitting for this thread though, because it survives for the exact reason the alpha wolf stuff survives: people love the story so they hang on to it irrespective of the science.
> it never replicated and should be considered just as bogus
Did someone try to replicate it? What were the results? What were their conclusions about its credibility?
> all the other stuff in social psych which hasn't survived the replication crisis.
Replication isn't black and white: Most of the experiments - at least in the early widely reported phase - did replicate but with less statistically strong results.
Can you elaborate more on this? I did not take psychology in high school, but I would imagine that such a course would focus on fundamental concepts where “replicating” wouldn’t even be an issue. There might be teachers who might bring up the pop-sci topics, but wouldn’t the meat of the class just be learning about theories or frameworks?
Right, and we've seen plenty of people who lead the "Rat Park" equivalent of human lives and yet still get addicted to opioids. There's clearly no single cause.
It's stunning how so much of our own behavior, or at least explanations of it, reference what turns out to be almost entirely false conclusions. It could take 100 years to undo.
Before we start dishing on sociology as junk science, I'd like to point out that a lot of what we consider science as junk science.
For instance, take the myth of RICE to treat injuries. The myth lived for over 30 years before being debunked, but even a decade after it was soundly routed, we still find the advice in the wild.
> Consider how this plays out in Silicon Valley, where the "move fast and break things" mentality has created a leadership culture that celebrates disruption over sustainability, dominance over collaboration.
That’s how the article phrased it. I’m not certain if I agree or not, but I’m not ready to either accept or dismiss it.
Extremely interesting topic, unfortunately shallow article. Still I'm happy for the input.
I'd like to learn more about how abundance of food, lack of threats and other comforts of civilization distort the formerly vital instincts into all kind of dysfunctional and harming behavior. And more importantly, how to manage those.
Dubious article. The role of aggression in establishing and maintaining social hierarchies was not mis-diagnosed in 1974.
The behaviors of alpha males (wolves) and alpha females (hyenas) are complex but threat and pain is part of the pattern. Highly variable by species, environment, and demographics.
Go over the hills from Silicon Valley to Ano Nuevo Marine Conservation Area and watch the behavior of male elephant seals like Bernie LeBoef has done for 30 years.
How does any of this apply to Silicon Valley other than as a cute and wrong metaphor? Are we really taking leads from dogs?
The popular trend in U.S. big business is 'animal spirits'. I read an article about how at Davos (iirc), people were bullish on the U.S. and bearish on Europe because the U.S. embraced "animal spirits".
in any competence where you've taken instruction, you need to be practicing at a certain level to be able to receive meaningful direction or guidance. the same is true for leadership. the model in the article seems like a bit of a straw man that plays to a sense of resentfulness about cartoons of "alpha" figures, and it may ultimately be misleading by creating misguided critics.
just lift, read the stoics, and master something. you'll get there.
And what about chimpanzees? Our closest relative genetically. Is anyone disputing that they exhibit a brutally dominant social hierarchy? Our second closest relative is (afaik, or close enough) Bonobos, who lump around all day jacking each other off.
While the alpha terminology may have come from dog packs, it's not exactly unobservable in other species, and even on these forums and in VC funding rounds you can observe people both jacking each other off with a healthy amount of social and institutional pandering and financial support, and other people not posting as much but taking dominant positions to "secure the bag" and whatever is downstream from that.
People don't like these conversations but it doesn't change the reality.
We have tons of current evidence that its true. I've never experienced a 'brutally dominant social heirarchy' personally; it's pretty uncommon. I don't live like Lord of the Flies.
IME the theory is a reactionary (i.e., anti-liberal, anti-humanitarian, anti-human rights) myth to justify the rule and worship of power.
It's not at all uncommon, either in history or modern day. The stats on wealth inequality in the west demonstrate this out pretty clearly.
It's probably more viscerally visible in poorer parts of the world, though trying to compare which is worse, is not very clear. You could argue in the western countries it's easier for someone to become entrenched and cement a position of "top dog" while if you are in a tribe in Africa the position is more fluid and volatile.
I think using the term 'brutally dominant' I invoked images of violence, and maybe something like 'cut-throat' is (ironically) more apt. While you yourself may be in a good and comfortable position, it doesn't negate the reality that people vie for positions of power all over the world every day and have for the entirety of history. We are not just Bonobos living in a forest.
if you mean literal brutality, but how the uber wealthy treating those of lower wealth could be considered brutal as well--in modern parlance of course.
You can’t draw more than rudimentary conclusions from the comparison because we could have evolved different behaviors, or we could share them, or we could work that way on the savannah but not in a city, etc. These conversations can be and are used to say whatever the speaker wants to say, since they can just select a trait that’s been observed in a monkey case study and apply it lazily to humans. “Wow humans sure like to jerk off, must be because we’re like bonobos!”
> Could you share the basis for saying they do, for those who are not primatologists?
You can look it up yourself, plenty of published research. I'm not a primatologist either but still managed to educate myself.
> Has someone objected?
You seem to be, in the most snide and backhanded way possible.
More generally yes people have been preaching (since the 60s majorly but obviously before that) that being kind, and that peace and love is and mutual reciprocity is not only one way to go about in life, but _it's the only way_ that you should pursue. And this very much the mainstream opinion. Meanwhile central banks have been printing money at zero interest to give to their friends, Saudis have been selling oil, states have been buying up weapons, bribing the US, etc.
And guess what? All of those people have lot more power and influence on the world today, than a guy living in the desert preaching how humans should be perfectly balanced at one with each and nature.
> How is that 'alpha wolf' behavior?
Zuckerberg retaining complete voting shares wasn't a power play?
Altman returning to oust the board and be CEO of OpenAI wasn't a power play?
Investors leveraging the outsized gains from an early success to bet on further outsized gains isn't a power play?
> Our second closest relative is (afaik, or close enough) Bonobos
They are equally close (tree-wise, percent-wise idk), and they exhibit a radically different and mostly nonviolent matriarchal social hierarchy. Not sure what the takeaway from that should be other than that maybe there shouldn't be a takeaway if our two closest relatives (and each others closest relatives) behave so differently from one another.
To me it's pretty obvious that we are somewhere in-between the two in temperament, but probably tending quite a bit more toward the chimps. I don't have a peer-reviewed study or empirical proof etc but some things are just staring you in the face. (see: all of history, boxing and MMA and other less violent but still highly competitive sports being popular worldwide)
I mean the interesting question is whether it is necessary, if we were maximally Bonobo would we have built the civilizations and technology we have? Possibly, but it's not beyond the realms of thought that the drive to amass power, to be the alpha or top dog, has driven action and risk taking, low probability paths to outsized gains.
There is a second question about whether we should be more Bonobo like now, but we are what we are and there is 7 billion people on the planet.
>People don't like these conversations but it doesn't change the reality.
I mean you have to be an idiot not to see it. You literally just observe all human societies. You have some leader at the top, the president, a king etc. etc. Then you have CEOs, VPs, Managers, team leads etc etc.
Human society is structured around alphas. Clearly. No I take that back. Humans are more similar to bonobos. At least that's how it is when I go to work we just jack each other off all day, no team leads or CEO where I work.
I think people run into definitional biases. I used alpha/beta as short hand in a comment last week and was downvoted just for using the terms.
In short, alpha does not imply male or violence. It’s someone for whatever reasons is at the top (eq, iq, physical attributes, confidence, etc). It also depends on the group, think big fish/small pond.
The author obviously wants to critique the machismo culture built into capitalism (which is totally fine!) but he seems to inherently subscribe to the naturalistic fallacy without being aware of it. Thus he feels the need to dismiss the idea of "alpha male" hierarchies in nature as non-existent as a way to dismiss them within our own society. You really don't need to do this and IMO, the flimsy premise of the start of his argument undermines his conclusion for society (which I actually agree with). Just because a certain type of sociological system exists within nature doesn't mean it's one we, as humans, should want for ourselves.
The abuse of the captive wolves research factoid is officially run into the ground. We now blame it for the whole organisation of humanity. I thought bashing online communities for using “alpha” was inadequate, but that takes the cake.
I don't intend to put the blame on the wolf study. I think it's more that we are in captivity, and exhibit deeply unhealthy relationship patterns with pretty much our entire environment from food, to women, to time itself.
This assumes hunter gatherers were better off than we are today. That's a controversial claim. You still have to survive in nature with finding food and making shelter, fending off predators, negotiating rival groups, dealing with disease and injury. It wasn't some utopian existence.
I think there are good arguments that Hunter gathers ate healthier more diverse foods; spent less time working; and likely were in flow more often than we are today.
The title says that captive wolves led us astray and the first paragraph asserts that the studies spawned decades of misunderstanding about power, leadership, and masculinity. The causal link is very dubious to say the least.
Regardless of the accuracy, analogizing to humans is absurd.
Some spiders eat their partner after mating, should we do that?
Some animals defecate to mark territory, should we do that?
Many abandon their children after birth or even eat their babies.
Maybe we should use artificial ovipositors and proboscises.
People want to ordain their ideology with the notion of natural order to claim it as scientific law. The accuracy of the underlying animal claim is irrelevant because the logic connecting some random animal to humans is nonsense.
I think causation is reversed. The goal of studies like these is not to dictate how we should behave, but to inform us how we might.
Should we use our feces to mark territory? Probably not, but when the concept of marking territory is as pervasive as it is then maybe it's worth considering how we would like to handle it to avoid falling back to feces.
Again, pervasiveness does not magically make it valid.
Many animals eat feces, that's extremely pervasive. It's an intrinsic part of the ecosystem. It's really hard to overstate how important poop from other animals is. Doesn't mean I should be cooking it for dinner.
Applying any behavior as having any meaning at all to humans, whether it be wolves or lobsters, other than that we should respect it, is complete nonsense.
There are no lessons to learn about how we should structure our workspace or allocate tax dollars by watching how jellyfish or seasnails live, any claim otherwise is merely ideological projection and creative license.
> Consider how these dynamics manifest in Silicon Valley, where Facebook's infamous "move fast and break things" mantra shaped a generation of tech culture. This emphasis on speed and disruption at any cost has created work environments that mirror the artificial pressures of captivity, where displaying dominance often takes precedence over fostering sustainable innovation.
–
Yeaa..... this is a huge stretch. I'm not a hustle culture proponent by any means (Patagonia's 'let them go surfing' seems great to me!), but "Move fast and break things" is a pragmatic mantra that speaks to the nature of enterprises in highly competitive markets.
Laypeople will balk at the idea of "breaking things". But that's hubris. It takes humility to admit that the breaking things part of discovery and invention isn't isn't optional. Fast or slow, you will break things pursuing an idea unknown space. The mantra speaks to the need to adjust risk tolerances in futuristic-leaning businesses.
There are other ways, of course. Bio-med breaks things in controlled trials, for example. But it's also slow as molasses. Rife with in-fighting.
But to equate alpha-male captivity with futuristic pragmatism is a huge reach.
The Alpha thing was always cringy. Reminded me of the way people used to take Buzzfeed quizzes that would define who they are. "It says I'm a Gryffindor because I'm brave!". Identity is a bottomless pit of manipulation and self-delusion.
I'm in disagree. They wolves tent to have a "big bad wolf". Now most wolves would never enter a house and eat bear soup, but some ofthe are quit psychopathic and can bring food back for the pack.
What this article doesn't mention is the eating of puppies. The big bad wolf is not a gentle wolf.
When a Canadian psychologist mentioned lobsters and hierarchies, the dogma to which members of a political group subscribe was updated to include the denial of alphas as a natural phenomenon, making it instead an artificial construct invented by their imaginary oppressors to hold onto imaginary power.
We have many real life human "experiments" that can be looked to in determining if the "alpha" concept is a "more successful" model in business. This is particularly true in areas where demand for highly qualified employees outstrips supply - such as many flavors of software development.
If the 'alpha' model is universally detrimental to success in business, it would quickly die out.
However it has not and most modern (and premodern) successful companies (by metrics of growth, profit, income, revenue, PE etc) have been founded and grown by "alpha" leaders and staff.
There are of course exceptions but we would expect the "alpha" model to instead be the exception if it was a less successful way of running a business.
In practice, both can co-exist and as a company matures it may, over time, switch between models.
Some people like the driven competitive environment and seek it out and will tend to end up at enterprises that favor the "alpha" model. Others who dislike such environments will seek out enterprises that utilize alternative models. An individual will likely be more productive in the environment best suited for them and an individual will rarely switch from a strong preference for one of these environments to a strong preference for an alternative environment.
If there is substantial dissatisfaction on the part of workers with the "alpha" model and an alternative model would be more productive and successful, startups would blossom that use alternative models and hire away the cream of the crop of the "alpha" companies' employees.
What he calls the “alpha” model might also be termed a “leader-follower” model where a single authority drives a team to accomplish his singular vision, like the captain of a ship drives and disciplines his crew.
It’s hierarchical and masculine, no doubt, and describes Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs as well as Walt Disney and Thomas Edison or even General Patton.
This leadership model might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it can definitely be successful, and it’s definitely a real thing, not just some redpill / PUA fantasy.
>However it has not and most modern (and premodern) successful companies (by metrics of growth, profit, income, revenue, PE etc) have been founded and grown by "alpha" leaders and staff.
Citation needed. By my estimation, the overwhelming majority of CEOs are doughy, effete city slickers who are the exact opposite of the prototypical "alpha male" image.
Zuckerberg, with his MMA training, might be the only one I can think of that fits the stereotype.
Don't confuse the putative "alpha male" with simply being a douchebag, because I can think of quite a large number of CEOs that fit that latter description, but it's not the same thing.
> Don't confuse the putative "alpha male" with simply being a douchebag, because I can think of quite a large number of CEOs that fit that latter description, but it's not the same thing.
Can you clarify the distinction? Most people criticising the "alpha" model seem to equate the two.
Reads like a Disney lens on nature. Whether or not wolves have a single alpha in a pack, nature is built around selfishness and violence with certainty, cooperation selectively. Animals watch each other suffer and die without a flinch all the time. And nearly everything dies from being eaten. Any lens on nature that sugar-coats this is projecting human values.
The author isn't saying nature isn't cruel. They're saying wolf packs don't work the way we imagine them to in popular culture.
You don't have males duking it out to be the alpha. (That's closer to gorillas and chimpanzees, though even among them it's rare.) You have a breeding pair and their pups. Wolf packs aren't monarchies, they're emergent clusters of wolves around a breeding pair that goes away when the breeding pair perishes. A younger wolf "challenging" an older wolf for dominance isn't the natural state; it's the space-constrained state that emerges in captivity. (Even that might be giving it too much credit.)
Nature is not 'build around selfishness and violence'. Any lens on nature that says this is projecting human values.
Nature is build around what works best for the survival of the individual's genetics in the current environment. That is called evolution.
You can't even project the human concept of selfishness on this. A worker ant supports its genetical survival best by sacrificing its life for the community.
To understand evolutionary developed strategies a wonderful tool is the calculation of probability. Science knows something about how to choose good strategies, and that may help us to understand 'why' evolution optimized for this and that.
In the case of groups of hunters (or many other groups), we know that cooperation is often superior to constant internal fighting. And choosing the best strategic thinker as the leader instead of the biggest bully is obviously a good idea in many scenarios. It is very reasonable that the wolves' leader selection process has optimised itself in such a direction.
and animals support and comfort each other without hesitation all the time too.
and "nearly everything dies from being eaten", yes, because nearly everything is in the human meat eating food chain, I kid you not.
no. the lens that depicts the world at constant war is projecting a mix of maybe personal experience and certainly group think onto an otherwise surprisingly cooperative and supportive nature.
Selfishness is the default setting, and is easy to explain in evolutionary terms. Unselfishness is what usually surprises us when we see it in animals.
Surprises you perhaps. Over 90% of plants rely on cooperation with mycorrhizal fungal networks. The evolution of lichen, a partnership between fungi and lichen, has happened independently tens of thousands of times. Our very cells rely on a once-alien cell with its own DNA that is now called the "mitochondria" for our very survival. Even still, the majority of cells in the human body are usually non-human. We literally couldn't eat a single thing without the complex multi-species microbes we rely on.
Cooperation is at the basis of all of nature. The difference between "competition" and "cooperation" is usually a matter of perspective and human bias. They are two sides of the same coin. We fit details about nature into one of those two frameworks to uphold a specific worldview we find useful for organizing information. Historically we've favored the competition framework, but take a look at the Annual Reviews journals for a field like Ecology, Mycology, Biology, etc and I think you'll see this is quickly changing
I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned. It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
I regard it as a dangerous mind virus. It is hard to rid yourself of it even if you see it is bullshit and harming you because it requires a substantial change in how you see your life. I think that’s because it is some hard truths (“people like powerful people”) mixed in with some cognitive distortions (“dominance is the primary mediator of all interactions”). The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in. Thus, the endless arguing about whether behavior is really “alpha” or “beta.”
There are good bits there, such as not letting yourself be pushed around. But that doesn’t make it all good or true. I really think the whole artifice is a cop-out for actually doing the work of individuation and self-development because you outsource all the hard work of deciding what you want to be and the temporary, self-imposed emotional exile it takes to actually discern that to following guidelines ultimately given to you by other people.
You’re still not crafting your own life, you’re just changing who you get your life script from.
It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
Hope that was helpful for someone.
A lot of men are terrified of the idea of not seeming masculine enough- and what it would mean for them romantically, socially, and professionally- which is why this is appealing as an idea.
Supposed “alpha behaviors” are seemingly identical to toddler behaviors to me. I think it’s ironically non-masculine to be so terrified of how you appear that you play act as basically a belligerent child incapable of compromise, teamwork, or navigating disagreements with dignity instead of being yourself.
The ancient stoics had a much healthier, and more useful idea of masculinity IMO- that still lets you be strong and not pushed around by others inappropriately.
Yes. It always struck me as incredibly insecure to make thinking of how one appears to others one's whole identity.
It's like up-badging a car. Most people won't care about it. Those who are knowledgeable about it will see through it. And those who actually do care about superficial things like that are probably not the kind of people whose respect should matter to you
It is narcissistic at its core. If you had a healthy sense of self, you wouldn’t need to constantly be monitoring how others perceive you, and trying to manage that.
Yes, that is absolutely the case, and while Narcissism appears strong and confident from the outside, it's really driven by massive amounts of anxiety and terror over not appearing good enough. Narcissism is really an awful disability caused by trauma that leads to a lot of suffering, not something impressive and powerful.
This is why I suggested stoicism (and modern therapy methods based on it like ACT and CBT) as a practical alternative that fulfills the same emotional need in a mentally healthier, and more responsible way.
It essentially flips this around entirely, and says the only thing that really matters is how you perceive yourself, e.g. knowing you are acting according to your own goals and values. You can only control how you act and perceive things, not what others think about you, and there is no value or point in worrying about things outside your control.
Instead of trying to "look strong" you can actually just be strong- and stand by your convictions and values.
Needing to always be dominant is just another weakness that opens you to being manipulated.
Agree on the stoicism point. Inner strength is just as important as external strength.
I think in part it is that the flawed study might actually be relevant to them because of the flaw. It studied captive wolves in an unnaturally constrained (and therefore competitive) environment, and that is how some people feel a lot of the time.
Trying to be the alpha in such a situation, so they can look down at the others and feel better, instead of doing anything to try actually improve the world, is an unhealthy reaction, but one I can at least understand.
Trying to be an “alpha” irrespective and create that sort of situation for others, on the other hand, is rather despicable.
Another factor in the longevity of alpha/beta/other designations is that they don't only come from that study (and those that followed it, or it referenced). The terms were used elsewhere both in science and fiction (and, specifically, in well known science fiction such as Huxley's “Brave New World” which pre-dates the publication of Schenkel's infamous wolf study by a decade and a half).
Yes! We're all captive in capitalist, imperial, colonial patriarchal systems that have wrapped the globe.
On the contrary, the so-called "capitalism" that emerges when we respect individual rights is the one way we can escape this.
Too much emphasis is placed on government regulation and corporate environments to "make things right" when, in the end, they are all just rigid bureaucratic structures that trap people and force them into heirarchies.
For my entire life, I have mostly tried to conform to this -- albeit mostly focusing on startups because they are more likely to value individuals, and less likely to have rigid structure and tradition -- but I'm only just now realizing that my autistic and ADHD tendencies being pigeon-holed even this much is a recipe for the burnout I've experienced for most of my adult life. I need to try something different!
And if I lived in a more rigid society (all non-capitalist countries are far more rigid than capitalist ones -- pretty much by definition) my options for fleeing rigidity would be vanishingly small.
This is an unfathomably based take, and you have improved my day significantly. Thanks.
The simple fact is that alpha males are a fact of nature. In wolves and in lions and maybe especially in primates like baboons and gorillas.
It's hilarious that something so obvious is considered worth denying, but I guess it's an example of how intellectualization can be used to exploit psychological weakness.
> The simple fact is that alpha males are a fact of nature. In wolves and in lions
Dude, you are literally responding to someone arguing that alphas are real with an article that completely disproves your thesis.
This isn't even a new revelation. Biologists have long known that the whole "wolf alpha" thing was BS.
But further, we aren't wolves, we aren't lions. Male lions taking over a pride will murder all the cubs, should we? Female Cynomolgus monkeys will have sex with every male in the troupe so as to confuse who that father is of the offspring, should we?
No species of animal is the same and there are no "norms" in the animal kingdom.
Nothing more beta than confidently spouting BS without taking the time to research your own positions.
Did you even read the article?
Reading articles that challenge your world view isn't a very "alpha" behavior unfortunately.
This was very well put. Thanks.
This myth has several things that well-designed misinformation needs in order to supplant good information:
1) it fits into existing worldviews - the myth of the alpha validates people continuing to do what they want to do and what they've always done. it's a lot easier to accept information that tells you that you and the systems with which you're already familiar and comfortable are correct
2) it's intuitive to understand - "the big guy kicks the crap out of the little guys and takes all their stuff" is not something that has any sharp edges to snag unwary intellects. We've all seen this system at work. Also the popular understanding of evolution at the time was that competition happened at the level of the organism, which dovetails nicely with this theory of competition and dominance where our more current understanding of competition at the level of the gene complex introduces the possibility of cooperation and even self-sacrifice as valid survival strategies.
3) it trended in the same direction as society at the time - the book came out in 1970, about the same time that we started trending toward neoliberalism which is a hyperindividualistic, hypercompetitive worldview. If you like neoliberalism then this is why you like it, and if you don't this is why you don't. This means that as this idea was becoming more and more well-known there was a lot of room for it in the emerging zeitgeist. It's the political and sociological equivalent to 1, but with significance added by people who were already dedicated to engineering our culture in that direction in the first place latching onto this idea because it indicates that they're so correct that the whole world is already designed around principles of individualism and competition.
Well put, but the countermeme ("Hey did you hear that the alpha wolf thing was bullshit?") seems to be as popular or moreso than what it's displacing. I did some light googling yesterday to see if I could find any references of "alpha wolf" before the 40s, and all I could find was page after page of articles exactly like TFA.
I think the same reasoning applies - it is vague and easy to apply and people want it to be true - just for different people.
This is my thought. I have no attachment to the idea, I've been comfortably and happily married for years. But dismissing the idea of "an alpha" among animals seems stupid based on one study. Isn't this the case among gorillas, lions, etc? And it apparently is the truth even among wolves in certain circumstances as the study points out. The OP should apply the same logic to interrogate his own motivated reasoning.
I think the truth is in the middle: people took what they wanted from the study in the 40s, and people are taking what they want from the updated study as well. Worse, the topic seems to be popular enough that it's being used as seo spam now. At this point, if someone with a deep understanding of both wolf behavior and human behavior were to review all available data, think deeply on the subject, draw meaningful and valuable insights, and write a popular essay conveying them, I don't know how I'd find it among all the dross.
I guess it has a life of its own now. Seems like a good example of the semiotics concept of the signifier becoming disconnected from the signified: a heated debate over the finer points of wolf pack social dynamics being carried out by people with no particular knowledge of or interest in wolves.
May be, but I never heard about it till I read this article in HN. Sincerely, I didn't even know that alpha-male was related to wolves :-)
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned.
What sometimes happens is that people use flawed reasoning to arrive to correct conclusions. Has it ever happened to you that you made a mistake but then you made another mistake and these two cancelled each other out? My take is, wolves might or might not have an alpha male, that is completely irrelevant, but if so many people subscribe to the idea, then there must be something true about it. In particular, most human societies are highly hierarchical. Heck, "the land of free" elects a new alpha male every four years, many other countries don't even bother holding elections.
> The lack of a true definition means there is no objective measure of what it is, which makes it impossible to feel secure in.
Just because a concept cannot be easily defined it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Example: tell me what is consciousnesses.
> It exploits psychological vulnerabilities in people and traps them: if you worry about your alpha/beta status, then you’ll be the type of person who wants to fix it, but there isn’t a fix because your perspective is the issue.
This way of thinking is extremely common. When people face a concept they don't like, they just deny it. Otherwise their belief system would turn out to be incomplete.
> I find it fascinating that some users here seem to be attached to the concept of an alpha male, reality be damned. It’s clear that this meets some emotional/psychological need for them.
Grifters and people selling right-wing politics have figured out how to market to male insecurity. They're selling politicians of course but also quack supplements, self-help nonsense, masculinity gurus, hilarious "boot camps" where you spend tens of thousands to have some dumbass yell at you, etc. All that stuff will leave you still insecure, and with less money.
Andrew Tate is probably the undisputed master of the alpha male grift. He's known as an abuser of women, and he is, but really men are his main marks. In a way part of his grift is to make his marks utterly repulsive to most women, keeping them alone and insecure and customers.
Sure, but don't lose sight of the fact that female insecurity has been leveraged and marketed to as well, for pretty much forever. Fashion, makeup, beauty standards -- flip through a magazine and look at the ads, and think about what the ads are suggesting the reader needs or would benefit from, and further think about whether the reader will be more or less insecure afterwards.
(And male insecurity has always been a target. Don't let that bully kick sand at you at the beach! But I agree that the targeting has recently been vastly more tuned and optimized and the most egregious forms have become socially acceptable.)
That's what I was getting at -- historically female insecurity has been more aggressively targeted, but that's been changing. I now see all kinds of marketing and propaganda tilted toward male insecurity, a lot more than I remember.
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I often like to sum it up as: "Thinking gangs observed in prison represent human households."
This goes along with an imagined mockumentary, narrated by a David Attenborough figure, ex: "In the living room, a confrontation is brewing. The Big Boss has informed the bottom-tier Henchmen Homies that it is time for lights-out, but they are not ready to leave the television and they resent the privileges of the older Made Man, who is permitted to remain. This is a problem for the Big Boss, since directly punishing them might undermine his claim to control the group as a whole. Fortunately for him, his Enforcer is arriving from the kitchen, attracted by the noise..."
When I was younger I made a switch from IT to teaching at elementary. One of the teachers that guided me, hinted to watch series about a dog trainer to see how he takes the lead, what happens between those. Although I respect that man, that really didn't resonate with me, realizing that I wouldn't want to learn that way; so I don't want to teach that way.
This article explains a lot better how I feel about this than I was able to 15 years ago.
If it makes you feel better, I’ve heard similar advice to manage executives
If I may ask, how did you teach back then and how are you teaching now (maybe in the same way)?
I'm also curious. When I first taught some younger kids I went in thinking they were like little people... that did not work well.
When I instead started to treat them as glorified chimps, everything went better for them and for me.
In the meantime I'm still somehow expecting that my children will behave like little people... Haha, humans really suck at learning, even from our own experiences.
Interesting. In my dealings with younger (and older) kids, thinking of them as little people seems to work well. Little, fully complete people, with many parts dramatically simpler (and more straightforward) than adults.
But then, I also think of adults as glorified chimps. Many parts are somewhat more complex -- though if you look closely enough, you'll see that much of the complexity is more of a veneer than anything deep.
Basic human nature shows through more with kids. Much of human nature is animal nature. Growing up seems to be mostly about setting those impulses against each other and delaying, suppressing, and avoiding the manifestations. In the process, we convince ourselves that we've had earth-shaking fundamental realizations about Truth and Beauty and Morality that lesser beings like children could never comprehend, as we go about our day with a sippy cup of caffeine in one hand, capturing the value that others have created as we lie and deceive to advance our supposedly noble goals, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the herd.
The key is to realize that they act and react like little chimps, but they are growing into people.
It's a really hard balancing act but with the chimp framework in place, the human development can flourish.
I have no idea how to treat chimps, let alone glorified chimps. What does this mean in practical terms?
I have a child and I'll be honest it was only when she was like 5 that I'd say that she was more complex than a dog. Small children cannot be reasoned with, only bribed and given sufficient motivation or demotivation via a carefully balanced set of prizes and punishments.
After that she could be reasoned with, but had reduced ability to keep to her intention long term due to lack of experience and inability to imagine outcomes, so a lot of teaching an early elementary schooler involves setting up experiments to demonstrate the wisdom or lack of wisdom in particular actions. At least in my parenting. I imagine this is what is meant.
Yip, pretty much exactly this. It's easy to get confused because they have all the makings of a person, but their minds are just still extremely underdeveloped.
For a silly example in teaching chess - a typical issue is kids moving way too fast. You can explain to them why it's bad, and they understand. They can then even show you exact moments where they really hurt themselves from moving too quickly, and so on.
So after this you think to yourself - 'I did a great job. He not only knows not to do this, but more importantly - why.' Then next game he's right back to playing like he starts with 10 seconds on his clock.
So then - ok forget all the logic stuff. Each move I want you to literally sit on your hands for at least 10 seconds before moving. And suddenly - the problem is resolved.
Maybe not all households, but some. And schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.
> schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.
The qualifier some needs to be applied to that too. None of the schools I have any personal knowledge of in the UK or Norway bear (or bore in the case of my own childhood) the slightest resemblance to a prison. Well, there was one. I accompanied a colleague in the US when he picked up his daughter at the end of the school day, I was astonished to find that he had to present himself at a reception desk that was guarding locked doors that were the only way in and out.
I think you are taking it too literally.
It is not about having bars and armed guards, it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc.
A lot of this applies to some other highly disciplined environments such as the military too, but it is not the norm for most of us (and the military volunteer to be there).
The physical and security aspects of a school in the UK are not like a prison, but the social and discipline aspects are. More so at some schools than others and I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be.
> I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be
I grew up in a poor rural area and my wife an upper class coastal community, both in the USA. It’s amazing to compare and contrast our public school experiences. I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity- I still feel terror remembering it decades later. Even the lessons were nonsense propaganda- science classes literally focused on creationism, history class on “states rights,” etc. She was in a playful relaxing environment that included regular upper class leisure activities like sailing, skiing, and horseback riding, and had well equipped science labs with teachers that were passionate about science.
While I didn't go to more wealthy schools as a child, I grew up in a 'middle class to poorish' rural area in the midwest and moved to a poorish area in the south.
I'll use your own words to describe the change in the experience
>I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity-
I got the full 'the science teacher is the bully coach and believes the world was created 6000 years ago, and if you were one of the kids they liked you could commit crimes, and you were not liked then crimes could be committed against you' experience.
That word for word describes what I experienced- we could have been in the same class
At least in the UK creationism is a rarity. The huge difference between good and bad schools exists though.
My kids were home educated up to 16 and then went to a sixth form college (school for 16 to 18 year olds) that is pretty good and well funded with some really good teachers (the physics teachers are outstanding - one that taught by older daughter now works for CERN, the head of department has a PhD, and they are all passionate about the subject). its not immune from league table pressure, the curse of education in the UK.
It is probably more about the difference between women and men experience growing up. Women usually do not face violence directly. They face other problems though.
Don't believe for a second that growing up in an upper class environment does not have social dynamics. I grew up in one in Europe. In an upper class school there are bullies as bad as you could find in a lower class one, probably worse, because they have resources and connections to create harm. And sometimes their parents are worse than them.
Do not idealise what you have not live. You could go skiing and they can choke with the ski poles. This happened to one of my friends because he criticised one guy.
You are not understanding the extent of violence and abuse I am talking about, and how it was systematically led and encouraged by the teachers and staff. I’m not talking about just bullies being at the school- or normal boys dominance and fighting - of course that can happen anywhere.
Despite going to a poor school, my family was well off, and I had personal experience with other environments including Boy Scouts, summer camps, etc. that still included normal social dynamics between boys with plenty of fighting, etc. but that is absolutely nothing like what I am describing above.
> it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc.
What do you make of the recent claim that something like 20-30% of people are fundamentally authoritarian in nature and want these fixed hierarchies and routines?
Yet it interesting how much of what we consider "human nature" is just us reacting to the cages we put ourselves in?
> interesting how much of what we consider "human nature" is just us reacting to the cages we put ourselves in?
Or that we aren't dogs. Chimpanzees do have an alpha male who commonly achieves his role through violence.
not solely through violence. alpha chimps are often big, but not necessarily the biggest.
best way I've heard it explained: the alpha chimp usually does the most grooming of other chimps of any of the males in the troop.
they're out there making deals and building relationships. tough guys can try to overpower those so the top chimp also gotta be tough enough to stand up, but it's as much about relationships as it is about muscles
Humans can also exhibit behaviors closer to those of Bonobos.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128
But their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence
> their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence
Correct. A book on Chimpanzees was connected to human nature by a reviewer in the Chicago Tribune, a 1999 Time article and the obviously totally-scientific pick-up book The Game [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male
Depends on the country.
Yeah.
Most countries manage to keep automatic weapons out of prisons.
...and schools
(that was the joke...)
> And schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.
and some workplaces.
Arguably many cities more resemble "captivity" than a natural environment.
Everywhere where you are unhappy and/or uncomfortable is a prison for yourself. It could be a football stadion where some weird guy has made you the mocking target.
another analogy would be: aliens abducting a bunch of humans and recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment and write up on human society based on that, which ends-up reshaping alien culture.
I would buy this sci-fi book.
The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey is surprisingly close in concept. It's Book 1 of a trilogy by the authors of The Expanse.
The results are likely to be different (aliens won't try to bias the same way original researchers did).
Why not? Evolutionary pressure is likely to be the same elsewhere, why should we think that it will have different consequences?
Dont you love Assembly-theory? Evolution is everywhere
I remember as a kid listening to adults talk about gender relations and thinking, you guys are talking about cattle and dogs.
Gangs in prison represent gangs out of prison though.
I don't think that's true, actually.
Do you have any evidence that suggests prison gangs are similar to street gangs?
I think they are, but causality is the other way around. A lot of gang originate from prison. Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime?
> Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime?
Maybe, but the question was a different one: are group dynamics in a gang in a prison the same as in a gang outside the prison?
Street gangs are really fascinating, and aren't, like, "well-oiled crime machines" in general.
Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down.
The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them.
As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs.
So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members.
You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang.
Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime.
Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.
It's fairly common historically for gangs to arise out of organized communal self-defense that itself happens in response to some threat. Once the threat is gone, the structure remains in place and members keep looking for ways to apply their newly acquired skills, with protection racket being a popular choice.
Why wouldn't it be?
You go to prison and have your rights stripped away and you pretty much have nothing. As much as gangs use violence they also provide protection and friendship.
Now you get out of prison and you have that big old criminal stain on your record. You're having trouble surviving and making enough, but you remember your new gang friends tell you to find a guy when you're out and he can help you. Congratulations, the circle is complete.
So you feel like it's true, and have constructed a model in your mind to explain why. Very interesting! Thank you for sharing.
“Why not?” Isn’t evidence and there’s a burden of proof that goes with the above claim.
Genius concept.
The flaw with the OP's article is that Alphas are not only observed in captive wolves. They are observed in MANY wild animal groups and even observed among humans.
I mean the first thing that comes to mind is lions and gorillas. Also CEOs in human societies. I mean are they not alphas? Don't we structure our teams according to leaders? Alphas litter human society and organizations. I feel the author is blind not to be able to see the highly pyramidal structure of alphas that encompasses every facet of human culture.
It seems clear in all your replies here that you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’, and as a somewhat relative term (like, my boss is an alpha to me, and a beta to their boss). Given your definition, of course it’s obvious that it apples to many facets of human society. Leaders and followers are all around us.
But in popular discourse there’s also a sense of ‘alphas’ getting into their position by violence or assholery that I think your definition is missing.
Even in scientific discourse, there is the idea that ‘alphas’ must gain their position by dominance - not by other methods (prestige, age, etc).
People use words in different ways, so in a way your definition is as good as any other, but (as with anything language related) you can’t really insist on it if others think it means something different and you want to have reasonable conversations with them (ironically, insisting on your definition seems like an attempt to assert dominance).
Edit: removed some snark, sorry. But I’ll also add: the article uses the scientific usage I mentioned above: wild real wolf pack ‘leaders’ aren’t ‘alphas’ because they don’t maintain their position by dominating the other wolves.
The claim that "alpha" is defined as requiring violence or assholery is incorrect, and this is backed by scientific studies, dictionary definitions, and leadership psychology research. Here’s why:
1. Official Dictionary Definitions Oxford English Dictionary (OED): Alpha (in social contexts):
Oxford English Dictionary - Alpha DefinitionMerriam-Webster Dictionary: Alpha (as in 'Alpha Male/Female'):
Merriam-Webster - Alpha DefinitionNowhere in these definitions does it state that an alpha must use violence or aggression to gain dominance.
2. Scientific Studies on Leadership & Alpha Behavior Study: Dominance Hierarchies in Social Animals Dugatkin, L. A. (1997). "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies." Behavioral Ecology, 8(5), 583-587.
Dugatkin, 1997Study: Leadership Without Aggression in the Animal Kingdom Smith, J. E. et al. (2016). "Obligate Sociality Without Cooperation: Insights From Other Taxa." Behavioral Ecology, 27(1), 1-14.
Smith et al., 2016These studies explicitly state that alphas do NOT require violence to gain or maintain their status.
3. Leadership Psychology: Alphas Lead Without Coercion Goleman, D. (1995). "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ." Bantam Books.
Goleman, 1995Bass, B. M. (1990). "From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision." Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19-31.
Bass, 1990These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
4. Debunking the Claim That "Alpha" = Violence L. David Mech (1999). "Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs." "The term 'alpha' is often misunderstood. In both animals and humans, successful leadership is based on intelligence, decision-making ability, and social bonding—not brute force."
Mech, 1999
This refutes the claim that alpha = inherently violent.
Final Conclusion: The Definition of "Alpha" Does NOT Require Violence Dictionaries define "alpha" as dominance through leadership, not necessarily aggression. Scientific studies show that dominance in social animals is often achieved through cooperation and intelligence. Leadership psychology research confirms that true human "alphas" lead through respect and influence, not assholery. The idea that "alpha" = "violent dictator" is a pop culture myth, not backed by science or formal definitions.
> These sources define "alpha" as a leader who influences others positively, not through aggression.
No? Look:
Your Merriam-Webster quote (although I can't find it online)
"the most dominant, powerful, or assertive person"
That's not becoming a leader by being helpful and getting people's trust.
It's instead dominance and assertiveness, that's something else.
I think you mistakenly what to have the word "alpha" mean the same thing as "leader". But I think that's not how people in general look at these words.
I just checked your #2 Dugatkin. I am only able to access the abstract [0] (though interested in the full article as you appear to be quoting from part of it which is not publicly available).
It does not at all represent itself as even taking a specific side on the meaning of "alpha" let alone testify to an academic consensus of any decisive proof one way or the other. It doesn't even have anything to do with the study itself at all.
The line you quoted seems more like an aside. The study was apparently about a simulated game theoretic model, and even refers to the units in the simulation as "combatants". It is an attempt to model and simulate "winner effects" and "loser effects" in tandem over time. It's mostly interested in contrasting this approach with models that only deal with "winner effects" or "loser effects" but not their simultaneous dynamics.
It ends with a modest expression of hope to spur future similar studies and is not even pretending to venture anything like a final definition of "alpha", let alone represent the full weight of academic consensus on that question. Citing it for that purpose feels like drive-by quote mining.
0. https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article-abstract/8/6/583/208...
Dugatkin, "Winner and Loser Effects and the Structure of Dominance Hierarchies" was an interesting read this morning. Thanks for the reference.
The main thing I take away from the paper is that (in computer simulations) bigger winner effects and bigger loser effects lead to strongly defined hierarchies. Fewer subjects have ambiguous positions.
I'm not sure the paper speaks much to which strategies (e.g. violence vs cooperation) are more common or effective.
Right, it seems to entirely abstract away the nature of the interactions themselves, and is modeling how changes to position in hierarchy unfold over time with repeated wins or losses. It's not speaking to the nature of the interaction itself, and so not really taking sides on whether it does or doesn't involve such things as force, toughness, etc.
Except all living things are inherently violent and knowing when to apply what amount of violence is part of being socially intelligent.
Violence is an effective strategy. One of many. It's not stable but it has been used successfully in human history. The thing is you can't have a society that's constantly violent all the time forever and ever. Those tend to self select via natural selection.
You can have societies be temporarily violent like how Americans slaughtered and killed Native Americans and took over the continent. The formation of the USA comes from this type of effective violence. Who would be the alphas in this case? the native americans? Or the ones that invaded? I know I'm a bit on the nose here, but this is just reality.
Citation needed. Such a vast generalization seems obviously false.
I don't even think the concept of violence makes sense when the being causing it has sufficient cognition.
Strange take.
Violence is like a key on a piano. You were born with it. You can choose not to play that note, but it is always there, it is never not there.
You can choose to play great melodies without the violence note. You can choose to play melodies with the violence note. You can be forced in a corner and have no option but to hammer the violence key until the strings scream.
> Official Dictionary Definitions Oxford English Dictionary (OED): Alpha (in social contexts): "A person who assumes a dominant role in a particular group, especially one who is respected or influential."
Do you have a link for this definition? I'm unable to find it or the one you attribute to Merriam-Webster on their websites.
(Their websites are shit. I'm curious about the dates around those definitions.)
>you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’
I mean that's all true enough, but their point, at least narrowly read as a general observation about animals, stands. There are ample examples in nature of dominance hierarchies, even if wolves aren't one of them.
Of course, as you note, looking to these examples as a basis for a personal ethos for tough guy psychology is error riddled in so many ways you could write a book unpacking it all. (E.g. why choose other animals remote from the lineage of apes to which we belong, why for that matter not just study humans in the first place, why hitch any ethos to what happens in nature, why not look at what it says about people who seem to need to indulge in this search, etc.)
It's good to show that this argument fails on its own terms with its own chosen example, but getting into that kind of back and forth risks implicitly agreeing that it would be right to think that way, should such an example be found in nature. And those examples do exist in nature even if not necessarily with wolves.
But as you noted that doesn't have anything to do with better or worse, right or wrong, and is completely lacking in self-awareness about the actual psychological dynamics that causes people to need these kinds of narratives.
> first thing that comes to mind is lions and gorillas
Better ones are chickens and horses. (Females, I believe, in both cases.)
Gorillas have a variety of social structures, only one which involves the Silverback fighting for dominance [1]. With lions, meanwhile, the females eat first [2].
> are they not alphas? Don't we structure our teams according to leaders?
Leaders, yes. Hotheads, no. The “alpha” hypothesis states that the most aggressive rises to the top.
[1] https://gorillas-world.com/gorilla-social-structure/
[2] https://www.felineworlds.com/lion-social-structure/
nah I've seen hotheads as leaders. It's not straightforward.
See here on what an alpha is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848939
Also for chickens, I've raised chickens. Trust me the rooster is the leader and that thing is a male.
> I've seen hotheads as leaders
Of course. Nobody argued aggression isn’t effective. The argument is it isn’t the effective strategy, just one among many.
> See here on what an alpha is
You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
> Also for chickens, I've raised chickens
Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
As your sources show, that isn’t necessary for leadership.
>You’re taking a definition that arose from animal observations and then filtered through anthropological and management academia. Colloquial, academic and industry definitions have diverged on this term; it’s probably being redefined in American English right now.
I cited two dictionaries as well.
>Chickens are the correct analogy. If you’re leading a team of people who remind you of chickens, leading with aggression works. (Not exaggerating. Some situations respond well to e.g. raising one’s voice or acting out frustration.)
Analogies were never part of the equation. You know they weren't. You were talking about animals explicitly not animals as an analogy. I feel you're trolling.
> I cited two dictionaries as well
Those are point-in-time snapshots. The Wikipedia article expands on the term's etymology [1].
(If you can provide links to those definitions I'll help look up when they were adopted. I couldn't find the definition you quoted on Webster's website [2], for example.)
> Analogies were never part of the equation
The term is an analogy. That's the point. There was a term in animal ethology that was popularised to the point it entered mainstream use. Synonymising alpha to leadership, moreover, is even more recent and mostly occuring in American English (and now, with partisan flair).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alpha#word-histor...
The thing is that when someone has to work hard to seem Alpha they are instead revealing their insecurity--the need to compensate to hide vulnerability.
Some people play into that game, others see through it.
Alphas are just leaders. Whether they have vulnerabilities is orthogonal to the fact that they control and lead the pack. Whether it’s through force or pay.
Do you have a good boss that you like who’s a good person? He’s an alpha. You’re a beta if you’re under him. Do you have a boss who’s an ass hole who got pegged and raped by his uncle when he was a kid and now he’s taking all that pent up humiliation on you? Yeah he has a big vulnerability. But. He. Is. Still. An. Alpha.
It’s not a game. Games are for friend groups and kids. I’m talking about the economic engine that builds civilization itself. That engine is made up of a hierarchy of alphas and betas.
(Dominance-related) insecurity is being pathologically averse to being seen as weak, which leads to preferring dominance as form over dominance as function. If the meek hippie gets everything he wants from his wife, his neighbors, his peers, etc., and the physically impressive traditional man is ignored and rejected, then the hippie is more dominant (i.e., leading and getting what he wants) than the traditional man (even if he is abusing his wife the whole time she laughs at him).
The actually effective strategies are available to the insecure but shunned and rejected because they cannot be tolerated, creating a self-imposed impotence.
The word alpha, in almost every context I've observed, is used exclusively to refer to such dominance as form, especially in substitution for dominance as function. i.e., it is applied almost exclusively to people who are definitionally not dominant.
The only exception I have encountered is women-focused kink literature which, being fantasy, maintains that dominance as form is dominance as function so as to make sexual fantasies seem more real.
In short: you are describing a kink, not real life. Though I consider that you might be joking too; I really can't tell.
>In short: you are describing a kink, not real life. Though I consider that you might be joking too; I really can't tell.
The fact that you said this means you're out of touch with reality. Let me provide evidence about how wrong you are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848939
Literally you can go to the dictionary yourself and look up the definition to see how baseless your argument is.
I don't know why you people are just pulling this bs out of thin air. It can't be just BS is several people are coming from your angle despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Maybe it's just shared victimhood. Were you bullied by these types of people before?
I call it a kink because I attract women with the kink.
I'm referring to pragmatics not semantics; the use of dictionary definitions is a category error.
No, I was not bullied. People like I describe would posture, I would raise my eyebrow and wait, and then they would treat me nice and pretend it didn't happen. Dominance as form outside the bedroom is remarkably ineffective. That's why I call it dominance as form.
"When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’; When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’; When he says no, he is not a diplomat. —Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)
These lines — also attributed to H. L. Mencken and Carl Jung — may or may not be fair to diplomats, but are surely correct in reminding us that more is involved in what one communicates than what one literally says; more is involved in what one means than the standard, conventional meaning of the words one uses. The words ‘yes,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘no’ each has a perfectly identifiable meaning, known by every speaker of English (including not very competent ones). However, as those lines illustrate, it is possible for different speakers in different circumstances to mean different things using those words. How is this possible? What’s the relationship among the meaning of words, what speakers mean when uttering those words, the particular circumstances of their utterance, their intentions, their actions, and what they manage to communicate? These are some of the questions that pragmatics tries to answer; the sort of questions that, roughly speaking, serve to characterize the field of pragmatics."[1]
--
1: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatics/
They are right though. You are describing a kink.
> I don't know why you people are just pulling this bs out of thin air.
"Am I so out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong." - Principal Skinner
> Alphas are just leaders
If you redefine alpha to just mean "leader", then the claim that CEOs are alphas is obviously true, but also meaningless.
But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders. There's no "redefinition" going on here at all. What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I attempted to jump that gap for you, but you're not able to see it.
>But the theory TFA is about was not just that wolf packs had a leader. It made a bunch of other claims, as TFA describes, and those other parts (that you're excluding) are what's considered debunked.
And he applies that to humans without considering alphas in other animal hierarchies. He implies that the entire theoretical concept of alphas comes ONLY from wolves and once he debunks wolves (with no citations) he debunks the entire concept of what an alpha is. Riiggght.
> There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders.
Yes, there is a redefinition. The context of Alpha Wolf was based on the notion of a dominance hierarchy, which does occur when unrelated wolves are put together in a confined space. In the wild though, they function more like a family, with no acts of dominance. The breeding pair still lead the pack, but not through dominance.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051214072331/http://www.npwrc....
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848939
That'd be relevant if it pointed to a problem with the etymology of the term Alpha Wolf.
Dominance != aggression
(South park had interesting episode on that)
Which episode are you thinking of?
> What's going on is you're not able to see how alphas apply to human society. You're not able to jump the intellectual gap to identify, "hey if packs of animals have alphas, what's the human equivalent?"
I literally just pointed out that if you are defining alpha to mean "leader" then it's meaningless to then claim that leaders are alphas. That was the comment.
> if you are defining alpha to mean "leader"
Could you elaborate what is the meaning of “alpha”? (I sense there is definition, that is being kept secret from me)
> Could you elaborate what is the meaning of “alpha”?
There isn't a fixed definition [1]. Most definitions reference dominance, e.g. Merriam-Webster [2]. (Annoyingly, dominance also has different meanings in anthropology, animal ethology, sociology and common use.)
But due to the term being relatively new, adopted from animal ethology, co-tiopted by the memeverse and now being politically charged, you're basically walking into semantic ground zero by using the term.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alpha#word-histor...
Have you actually read the article? He does give a citation to the same author who initially coined the term alpha wolf.
And redefining alpha to just mean leader is a redefinition, as written in the article the term originates from the alpha wolf who achieved dominance through overtly aggressive behaviour (which does not match with how wolves behave in the wild).
It's ironic that you bring up CEOs etc as proof that there's alphas, when the whole premise of the article is that recent structuring of human society is based on an this wrong view that the aggressive dominance is "natural" and what is required for leaders
>Have you actually read the article? He does give a citation to the same author who initially coined the term alpha wolf.
I meant link to source. Like point me to the place where he defined it that way. Instead he just made a claim without a citation.
For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42848939
These are citations proving my point.
That's not how the word alpha is used colloquially. I believe error_logic is referring to its colloquial usage.
The colloquial usage is leaders. Not people with insecurities.
The only colloquial usage I've seen is that it is someone who has the ability to demand that others perform a public display of obedience to them. Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "alpha," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "alpha," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
> Like every time I've seen somebody unironically refer to themself as an "your leader," it's always had that underlying connotation of "Respect Me!" And every time I've seen someone mocking somebody else for being an "my leader," it's because, well, that respect was clearly undeserved.
I think same sentiment persists when alpha->”your leader” replacement is made.
Right but the term here is used to categorize human/animal hierarchies/behavior in an objective context. No one is here projecting their alphaness onto others. Clearly.
A colloquial usage is leaders.
Another common colloquial usage is total self obsessed wanker.
> Alphas are just leaders.
No they are not. There are plenty of leaders who are not alphas and they lead organizations that achieve good things.
Alphas are generally just assholes who want to be leaders. They usually lead self selected friends who crave their validation and people with healthy boundaries just nope out of those systems.
The article isn't wrong about captivity/freedom, although alphas are certainly thing.
Hierarchies are naturally born out of confrontations and how they're settled, and captivity (ie scarcity) breeds confrontations. If two separate entities have opposing wants which cannot be satisfied simultaneously (ie are mutually exclusive), how do you determine who get's what they want? Well, naturally some kind of fight happens. Which either involves displays of intimidation, threats, arguments, or acts of violence (ie aggression).
Naturally, living organisms value life and consider risks which threaten their livelihood, and so, these situations are always an assessment of wants, such as "is my want for the last piece of food, greater than my want to avoid fighting my opponent?" Or, "Am I willing to risk dying for this? Do I need this food, do I need to fight this opponent or can I get food elsewhere before dying of starvation?".
As so, animals typically use violence as a last resort for settling disputes, unless the risks are so low as to be play (ie you're certain to win). It should therefore not be surprising that captive animals (or animals backed into a corner) feel obligated to fight, as they have few alternatives to avoid confrontation. Whereas, non-captive animals, by being more free, are better able to avoid a direct confrontation, and therefore exhibit less acts of aggression.
An alpha, just happens to be those who win disputes repeatedly, and opponents or potential opponents have learned to be intimidated by them, and so cede disputes to them when they arise without fighting. A hierarchy is thus naturally formed from repeated disputes.
Thanks for this.
There has been some research that shows primates are more likely to cooperate in scarcity and compete during abundance.
Not universal and other factors are at play, but chimps generally prefer to cooperate vs compete.
I argue that the 2 greatest factors for human survival have been our creativity and cooperation.
We run an AI Research Lab every week where this is a central theme, helping folks navigate uncertainty through a focus on creativity and cooperation.
Lions, gorillas don't recapitulate "alpha"s and CEOs are a legal not natural construct.
The legal document is a natural construct born out of the moral and behavioral instincts humans have.
CEOs are not a legal construct, that's the "President" of a corp, or the "Chairman of the Board". CEO is a popular sobriquet because it sounds cooler.
Incorporations are legal constructs. Any position in one is even more so.
Corporations are required by law to have Presidents and Chairmen. That is the legal construct.
They are not required to have CEOs who therefore sit on shakier legal ground.
> Corporations are required by law to have Presidents and Chairmen
Varies by jurisdiction. Common ones are a president, secretary and treasurer. (They can be the same person.)
when companies are big enough (to where CEO actually has meaning), shareholder rights kick in, and there are many additional legal requirements; none of those require a CEO
If CEOs are the alphas, then why are some of them so submissive recently to a certain someone? The alpha male mythos tells me that these men have huge amounts of agency and power and yet...they make a big show of turning themselves into lapdogs? The Internet says thats not alpha behavior!
It's almost as if reality is more nuanced than what 4Chan taught us: CEOs have people they need to answer to, people they're scared of, and that's part of what it means to be a human.
Lions? Females rule the groups there. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBiology/s/M1VsH34t5Y
That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.
That’s equivalent to the male on the couch watching TV with a shotgun on his lap defending his territory and the females going hunting (aka kitchen) to make the husband a sandwich.
Joking aside the males are the leaders. How do I know? They kill the kids on arrival and the females can’t do fuck shit.
> That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.*
That's a myth.
Male lions do hunt. When hunting alone and not as "heavy support" for the females, they use different strategies than the females, and do it in a different environment. I read an article from a researcher about that in particular, can't remember any context to find it quickly though.
There are many (scientific and casual) articles like that though:
- https://singita.com/archive/wildlife/wildlife-mythbusters-ta...
- https://medium.com/@shelldonwells/do-male-lions-hunt-e9f5ea5...
Don't CEOs spend a lot of their time groveling to investors for money?
We live in a hierarchical pyramid where there are alphas managing sub alphas and this happens at multiple resolutions within our society.
The ceos are groveling to investors, aka billionaires. I guess those guys are the true alphas.
You just redefined alpha as a person with money.
I would argue that the wealthy which hold loans based on stock collateral are holding debt and not credit. US banking laws are just hiding the fact. So a number of rich people you define as alpha are not really alpha because of debt vs credit imbalance.
This means the person spending money while going through Disney World are alpha.
Bro I define an alpha as someone who leads and controls others. Someone people follow whether by will or by force or because they are paid a salary.
You’re just being pedantic. I don’t need to explain to you why people intrinsically know Elon musk is an alpha and the person going to Disney world is a beta.
To me the Alpha Mentality is just stupidity in another Yes-Man form.
Seems you hold the alpha mentality deeply and respect those you seem as alpha. By your own logic, cult leaders are alpha and should be respected.
Respect can only be earned, continuously reinforced, and lost in a single moment. Respect cannot be demanded or forcefully requested.
Watch the first episode of "Band of Brothers". Who would you want as a leader, the alpha, one with power, Captain Herbert Sobel or 2nd Lutenaint Richard Winters, the one without power?
I’m really confused as to how trips to Disney are entering the conversation here. What does that have to do with any of this discussion?
This is a very not HN comment
Sure HNers hate Elon for various reasons. But overall some random dude who goes to disney world versus A billionaire who caught a rocket and makes stupid tweets online.... Let's be real here about what "society" defines as alpha, not some HNers backwater opinion.
ANd even that HNer knows his contrary opinion is backwater. Trump and Elon get a lot of hate, but they are leaders on the apex of the human status hierarchy.
When I think of “leaders of the human status hierarchy”, I do not think of a man who spends his entire day online trolling people, regardless of whether he is worth billions or not. Similarly, I don’t picture a guy that wears lifts because he is ashamed of his height, or who paints his face orange, to be that “apex” either.
Richest person in the world and president of the USA are not people at the top of the hierarchy? Who is then?
Is it you? Because you don’t spend all day trolling people or you don’t paint your face orange? Let’s get back in touch with reality please.
> Trump and Elon get a lot of hate, but they are leaders on the apex of the human status hierarchy.
Trump can’t spell “Colombia” and Elon is, at best, an idiot savant.
It is hilarious to see people use bro pseudo-science to reconstruct dialectical materialism.
look, HN, stop feeding the troll. he's tweaking you - just shun him
For some public companies retail share holders also have to be groveled to.
I don't have an overall point here other than that power isn't as simple as some people want it to be. You command a ship until there's a mutiny. There are hierarchies, but that's only one way of slicing things. It's more about a set of several feedback loops that nobody explicitly understands.
Of course it’s not simple. But alphas and betas are intrinsic to society and that’s my point.
You will see that society converges towards alphas. There have been attempts to make everything egalitarian but it doesn’t last and alphas pop up everywhere. Heck you can’t even make a purely voting society where society votes on everything. Instead everyone votes for an alpha. Aka trump.
Citations, please. This may be a US-centric site, but that does not mean all societies on this planet behave like Americans.
Capital by Thomas Picketty. He’s French.
I don’t like your tone. When you say not everyone behaves like Americans you sound like you’re implying superiority as if Americans don’t behave well and I have to conform to your version of good behavior. Change your tone or I won’t continue with you.
Ahoy. I agree that humans aren’t wolves.
For a good primer on hierarchy dynamics in human systems, I recommend Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.
In what Logan calls stage 3 leadership, organizations cluster around individual “rockstar” people - and this is the vast majority of human organizations.. they estimate 80%.
In Stage 4, it’s all rockstar people organized around values vs. a person.
You certainly still have people who have authority through competency, but people aren’t granted authority based purely on “position”.
Stage 4 culture are the best in the world, and learning how to build them is a worthwhile skill.
bunch of submissive in the sheets CEOs? as long as we're operating on feelings and emotions here the whole thing is dimwitted bullshit psychological theory
Surprised not to see David Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything" recommended yet in a thread like this.
It details how "pre-modern" societies functioned based on the available archaeological and anthropological evidence we have, and one of its key findings is just how much human history conflicts with narratives like "the alpha myth". It also goes into detail about how we ended up with so many social narratives like it that just don't have any justifiable precedent.
this is way above the audience. this conversation is unfortunately like talking about garbage collector algorithms in different architectures, to social science grads.
but in the rare case a social scientist want to lear about memory borrowing, i would also suggest somethig more recent (and less anachist to this crowd) https://ia804705.us.archive.org/13/items/byung-chul-han-the-...
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's great to post relevant and informative links, but please do it without putting down others. If you're participating here, you're as much the community as anyone else is.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I've had that (The Burnout Society) on my to-read list for awhile, do you recommend it?
I think the core thesis is spot on from what I've seen of discussions, and am looking to decide which aspects of ambition are my own, and which have I have accepted unconsciously.
Coincidentally, I actually re-read The Burnout Society a few months ago while I was listening to The Dawn of Everything.
I strongly recommend The Burnout Society, though I think it tackles these issues from a different perspective: "how we compromise ourselves in service of the (false) personal and societal narratives we've constructed".
A more direct line to The Dawn of Everything in the sense of "how did we construct these narratives in the first place?" would probably be Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. Coincidentally for this thread, it also includes a chapter on the results of real wolf domestication studies (and how it affects animal behaviour) in past decades.
its good but very "pop". if you're already in the matter, either deep dive on papers not books from Graeber or go to the still verry relevant source of all this, wich i consider to be Gramsci.
I might not be the best possible version of myself but I am at least a release candidate, and therefore have transceded the concepts of „alpha male“ and „beta male“.
Some cowboy developer pushed me to prod despite a glaring beta tag and a plethora of known critical bugs. Yet here I am, 45 minors later with the beta tag still there, delivering measurable value to all my users.
I'm an alphalfa male. I sometimes eat vegetables.
Author: Applying behavior of wolves in captivity to humans was a mistake.
Also Auther: Applies behavior of wolves in free environment to a very specific and complex part of human society.
And of course, zero link or citations on anything.
Easier to tear down than it is to build well.
I admit to being rude and to being a very bad builder myself.
But the article is bad. Just about every piece of evidence has some sort of issue. Correlation-causation, or not enough data, or just assumptions. The wolf stuff (seems to be) based on only 2 observations. The author cites big tech in CA, but then describes a single clothing company that has a high random metric that is supposedly an accurate indicator of all of the above.
And the connections between arguments are not even that good. Skimming over it, I wasn't sure what the article's point was.
As for the conclusion, the vague words on what could be done are the kind of stuff everyone is trying anyway for other reasons, and it isn't (?) working.
No. Author: deducting that behavior observed in captive environments was also true in liberty was a mistake.
Author: silicon valley is somewhat of a captive environment so lessons from captivity are not entirely wrong.
Alphas aren't only observed in captive wolves. They are observed in MANY MANY animal groups.
I think the full picture isn't some liberal idea where everyone lives in harmony and can work together for the common good without the weakest link ever getting left behind.
The truth is it's a bit of both. We live in a world where it's dog eat dog but also companionship and working together are BOTH effective strategies for survival. Most humans are programmed to be able to handle both modes of survival . Depending on circumstance one strategy often becomes critical for survival. For example: if you're in captivity or aka a setting with very very limited resources the alpha strategy works best.
Of course no citations for me either. But I think it's quite clear the author is biased.
You’re right. Antarctic penguins and walruses are good examples of this. Penguin females go hunting, while the males hatch eggs and rear the young till the females return. Walrus males, OTOH, absolutely dominate other walrus males, and keep a harem of females.
But who cares? Humans are more closely related to primates than other animals, who exhibit all kinds of different behaviors across species. I am not sure why we’re trying to model human behaviors from wolves at all.
In fact, human advanced cognitive development is unique amongst the entirety of the animal kingdom, so it’s okay if humans have behaviors which are unique just to us, and are unobserved in other animals.
There’s a recent book, “Bitch: On the Female of the Species” by Lucy Cooke, which specifically targets the traditional “strong males weak females is the natural order” trope. It’s brilliantly written, comprehensive in its dismantling of the concept, and a very fun read (side note: I have a habit of reading in bars, and this one got a lot of looks)
https://bookshop.org/p/books/bitch-on-the-female-of-the-spec...
The original researcher did correct the record about what entails the alpha wolf in a natural setting, noting that pack leadership was usually based upon familial group dynamics, instead of the cliche biggest and strongest that beat down opponents, but in pop science this correction went too far, basically discounting the idea of an alpha wolf altogether. In virtually every discussion about this myth people will regurgitate the notion that there is no alpha.
But...there is. He never claimed there wasn't an alpha. Just that the selection among a group of wolves forced together differs from a group of wolves in a natural setting.
So Tony Soprano was the alpha of the crime family even though many other characters were likely stronger, crazier, etc. He had the backing of so many people that they knew that his bark had bite, even if it wasn't from him directly.
> noting that pack leadership was usually based upon familial group dynamics, instead of the cliche biggest and strongest that beat down opponents
So, sounds like if the author read the study more closely and continued with his idea of basing human society around dog society we should structure society as a hereditary monarchy rather than rule by warrior kings.
Did anyone consider that our society IS artificial conditions? Not sure about you all, but western society feels much more akin to a zoo than the wilderness.
You're far more likely to be eaten alive by something in the wilderness than in a corporate office.
If we've achieved nothing else, at least we've added a layer of political and economic indirection to our cannibalism.
I don’t understand what you mean.
That you can certainly opt in to artificial nonsense, as wholeheartedly and completely as you want, doesn’t mean society is artificial. It just means that’s the part you’ve decided to live your life in.
C’mon now, you know what he means. Or you’ve got a decent idea of what he might mean.
People are beginning to consider that the most pervasive aspects of society—parts that you don’t have a choice whether you’re a part of it or confronted by it—are social constructs, and that humans are constrained in what they’re allowed to believe in and how to come to terms with those beliefs amongst one another.
Soo maybe the "alpha" behaviors we see are a natural response to unnatural conditions and it's more about how we behave when we're stuck in systems
This is what I've been leaning towards after initially renouncing the experiment for its arbitrary nature. "Alpha" behaviour emerge in zero-sum/artificial scarcity situations, yet contemporary society is full of zero-sum situations and artificial scarcity due to market inefficiency and gatekeeping. It's not just Western society either. If anything, Western-aligned industrialized societies experience far less scarcity. So the behavioural pattern shouldn't be entirely dismissed as pseudoscience, but worthy of critical inspection and reference.
> Alpha" behavior emerge in zero-sum/artificial scarcity situations
Zero-sum, yes, but why only artificial scarcity? It seems like this would arise in a natural situation as well... Even if you lived on abundantly producing land that is not (yet) heavily populated there is still going to be mate competition.
From the article:
> Instead of ruling from above, he built a flat structure where decisions emerge from collaboration.
I've also seen the flip-side of this - where due to the fact that there is no established hierarchy, you spend inordinate amounts of time welding entirely disparate architectures together since every team was cowboy coding and doing their own thing.
Also anecdotally, I've never once experienced this Type-A prima donna alpha engineer but I've had absolutely zero interest in working for a FAANG. Every engineer I've ever worked with was pretty easy-going.
> Every engineer I've ever worked with was pretty easy-going.
Every one seems easy going until you disagree with them.
Ha, Ha; True. For some reason people don't want to face reality but want to believe in fancies/stories which they have picked up from surrounding society.
Related, the Norwegian documentary series "Hjernevask" (i.e. Brainwash) is interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask
" Type-A prima donna alpha engineer "
Most are bluster.
Talk loud and fast and be rude, arrogant, and lot of people will think you must really know what you are doing.
The fact the wolf alpha male theory was wrong doesn't imply we don't have alpha dominance for men.
Do we use alpha male gorillas to explain the concept?
(Edit) Or Chimpanzees: https://news.janegoodall.org/2018/07/10/top-bottom-chimpanze...
> Do we use alpha male gorillas to explain the concept?
We should use chimpanzees. The popular definition evolved pretty much indepdenently of the science, unfortunately [1].
Management texts have tried toning this down, particularly in the gender-equality years. At its nonsensical limit one wound up with alpha = leader, which is tautologically useless as a tool for explaining leadership.
The term probably belongs in a bin. There are deep social lessons we can learn from observing chimpanzees. (Or even wolves.) But they're not going to condense into a single term, certainly not one that's been through the 4chan and partisan ringers. Even among chimpanzees, we see a variety of tactics used to achieve dominance, including groups of chimps banding together to topple a leader.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male
> 4chan and partisan
I love the dialectical equivalency here, Feels exactly accurate. At least 4chan plays you laugh you lose, federal politics seems to omit the first half.
> dominance, including groups of chimps
Indeed one of the most fascinating lessons. "Alpha" by force is almost tautologically impossible; leadership is built on inspiration and willfullness.
Even within apes the variance is wide enough that I question the value in drawing any conclusions about human nature, especially for laypeople. Why chimpanzees and not bonobos who are equally close relatives to humans but whose social structure is matriarchal, non-territorial, and considerably less violent?
There is such myriad behavior in the animal kingdom that drawing insight into human social structure from it seems like it is more often a Rorschach test than it is a scientific exercise.
Are there management texts from some era where this was actually promoted as a model?
>We should use chimpanzees
Why should we use anything at all? Aren't we people ourselves, who, you know, behave like people, without being taught how?
>behave like people, without being taught how
Ok, what does this mean when pretty much all people are taught to be people by the generations before them?
We throw out a number of feral children and see how they grow up in the wilds? Doesn't sound very ethical.
> Why should we use anything at all?
Same reason we play with models: it’s easier to understand through analogy, with the familiar cast unfamiliarly.
Exactly. The concept didn't come from wolves alone. We also call it a pecking order based on chickens.
The concept of a dominance hierarchy is widely established:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy?wprov=sfti...
And the gorillas and chimpanzees studied are not in captivity.
Obviously not every species exhibits this, and the ones that do don't exhibit it all the time. But the article acts like the concept has been discredited when that is not the case at all.
As well established as dominance hierarchies are, they aren't the only social structure, and just as this article explains, it's rather ironic that in the case for wolves, that isn't the prevailing social structure in their natural setting. That wolves have become the prevailing reference point for the concept, is metaphorical on a lot of levels.
The discrediting is of the inevitability of its all-encompassing effects. It can be present without needing to be defended or prevent the Alpha from caring for its young.
Humans don't want to be chimps though, they want to be wolves. Or lions. Or eagles. That sort of thing. So a narrative about strong wolves dominating weaker wolves is gonna catch on like wildfire and you can bet your house on that.
Is this like how middle management reportedly wouldn't be caught dead dressing like the janitor, but super rich people supposedly dress like the janitor in order to not look like middle management?
The term for that is countersignalling. https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/counter-signall...
This sounds like Scott Alexander's "Fashion explained with cellular automata" article, which was neat but probably not what OP was referring to and certainly not related to TFA in any way I can see. Still a good read tho.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/
I would much rather be a chimpanzee than a wolf or a lion.
Well then, good news for you.
https://www.science.org/content/article/bonobos-join-chimps-...
...or, it's just a solid case of confirmation bias.
Indeed, once we fall in love with a model we can usually find some evidence for the model.
I don‘t think those alpha men like it if they behave like apes. Wolves are way cooler.
It just means analogies are dangerous. Would be nice if we could determine if the effect actually applies to humans before introducing yet another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ti86veZBjU
Why are we trying to make human societies mimic animal ones? We're the insanely successful species, not wolves or chimps or gorillas or lobsters!
The fact that the evidence doesn't exist doesn't imply the phenomenon doesn't exist?
Remind me, why gorillas and not chimps? Why chimps and not bonobos? Why assume that two related species with completely different environmental niches must share a social structure?
> The fact that the evidence doesn't exist doesn't imply the phenomenon doesn't exist?
Wolves were never meant to be evidence. They were a model, a metaphor.
I wonder how many people who complain about "believing the myth of alpha wolves" are the same people who defend astrology as a "useful way of thinking, whether it's true or not".
Until it was debunked, people thought that the alpha/beta/omega nonsense was the actual natural social order of wolves. Some people then borrowed that as a metaphor.
Right, "alpha" means a lot of things in ethology, but the "alpha/beta/gamma" categorization that took hold in reactionary circles was specifically derived from the wolf studies. "Some individuals tend to be more socially dominant" is not controversial.
> Until it was debunked, people thought that the alpha/beta/omega nonsense was the actual natural social order of wolves.
Some wolf biologists thought that, sure. But that obviously wasn't and isn't any kind of evidence about human sociology (and conversely nor is the fact that it isn't).
> defend astrology as a "useful way of thinking, whether it's true or not".
I wonder how many people defend mind palaces as a "useful way of thinking, whether it's true or not".
Historically speaking, that's all astrology was. Research has indeed shown that people who practice astrology are better at remembering details about people in their lives. Astrology is just a mind palace that allows them to more easily memorize and organize useful facts about the people in their social networks
Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Baboons are similar in their social structures with the dominant alpha males. Bonobos are different with it being matriarchal and conflict resolution being less violent.
Sadly not that simple.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animals/bonobos-arent-as-p...
It actually works with chimps. They _are_ very hierarchical and somewhat neurotic even in the wild.
It's no wonder that they are our closest cousin.
Gorillas, in comparison, are much more laid-back.
Our closest cousins are actually bonobos (or at least they are as close to us as chimpanzees are), which don't have this type of hierarchy. Regardless, group social hierarchies don't necessarily translate even between closely related species, such as chimps and bonobos, so there is no reason whatsoever to extend them from some ape to humans.
> The fact the wolf alpha male theory was wrong doesn't imply we don't have alpha dominance for men.
It isn't wrong. The headline is intentionally misleading and the article is just woke nonsense. Read it for yourself.
What the article is really saying that the alpha in a zoo wolfpack is different than an alpha in a wild wolfpack because a zoo wolfpack is between non-related wolves whilest in the wild, wolfpacks are composed of family members ( alpha father/alpha mother and children ).
There are alpha in wolf packs ( zoos and wild ). Just like in a human family the father/mother are alphas while in a gang, the alpha is usually a non-related individual.
The "myth" isn't that the alpha doesn't exist. The "myth" is about the relation of the alpha to the rest of the pack.
I feel like the term "alpha" is deeply problematic since different people use it to mean completely different things.
Many people associate it with the toxic traits of dominating others through aggression. While other's use it to reference a healthy, good, strong, well developed and balanced individual who helps others.
I think we need new terms for these things so we can start differentiate them.
The problem is that people who use the toxic definition of alpha really like it! There is no motivation to change sadly.
No matter what new terms are invented, people will reinterpret them to align with their own perspectives.
If "alpha" means good in some social context, people will load it up with all the contradictory qualities that different people consider good.
I think the path forward requires rejecting appeals to nature.
"Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.
If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved." ~ Chesterton
Yup. This whole article is just a glaring case of the naturalistic fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy)
You don't need to argue that "alpha males" don't exist amongst wild animals to make that case that it's bad for human civilization.
I feel that rather than disproving the alpha myth, this emphasizes that it works well in cages.
What makes a cage? I'd say something where sustainability is a factor - there are limited leads, limited work, limited territory. People slow down otherwise they become too productive, deplete the work available, and get laid off. Hierarchies evolve around controlling these limited resources. All the danger is internal. There's constant resources coming in from god knows where, so budgeting takes priority over hunting.
Yes. It seems almost like a tautology that alphas arise in environments with scarcity and competition.
Wasn't there a guy who did the "rats prefer cocaine to food" study but without having the rats isolated in individual cages, and it turns out that no, they don't actually prefer cocaine to food when they aren't (essentially) in solitary?
You’re talking about the Rat Park study. That one is also controversial and hasn’t successfully replicated. Personally I think the general idea of a connection between emotional trauma and addiction is pretty obvious, but also a but more complex than the Rat Park study implies or assumes.
> hasn’t successfully replicated
To be clear, lots of studies have shown that animals in richer environments do less drugs; though the effect doesn't seem to be as strong as Alexander claimed.
Yep.
Hopelessness keeps you on the drugs as much as biochemistry.
Kicking any bad habit is easier if you have something to replace it with.
People didn't get their worldview from the myth. They like the myth because it fits their worldview.
>In their natural habitat, wolf packs operated nothing like the prison-yard dynamics he'd observed in the zoo.
Human's aren't in their natural habit most of the time either. "Prison-yard dynamics" is how the public education system functions. This is where our children are socialized.
High school is more complex as there is a life outside it where other dynamics can be observed. At least that's what I noticed and it made me realize that the popularity contest in high school was a farce.
> it made me realize that the popularity contest in high school was a farce.
Observing outside life has led me to conclude that the high school popularity contest, is, in fact, the most authentic, freest form of human social behavior.
I agree 100%. I could only see it in the last year or two: Instagram allows people to maintain high school popularity in adult life. Before Insta, those people faded into oblivion because there was no global platform to amplify their good looks or likeable personality. (There were still popular, but in much smaller social circles.) After Insta, "high school popular" people can maintain it indefinitely.
Lmao “I’m mad some people look nicer than me and know how to be kind to people. They suck and are only popular because of Instagram.”
My guy, comb your hair, take a shower, put on deodorant and a clean shirt. You’re fine.
I don't disagree of course. And this is less a critique of the individual men vs our current social structure. A good deal of my work is in helping people free themselves, however, this wouldn't be necessary had it not been a life long project of incarceration.
I suspect this is part of the reason unschooling is become more popular.
15% of the 5% homeschooled is not very popular.
Up from 0% before the process was developed.
are we equating homeschooling to unschooled now? while there are definitely people claiming homeschool while just as a cover for not being in school, that doesn't mean that all homeschool is not educating the kids.
GP commented on slope, not value, not to mention proportion.
Unschooling has been around for some 50 years. 0.02%/year is one hell of a slope. It's a fad that will pass just as many other fads pass.
Thanks for some data, do you have a source for that?
Curious prediction.
Googled in 5 minutes.
I appreciated a point I saw a few months ago about how the wolf-derived alpha/beta/etc stuff is a safe way for cis men to experiment with gender identity without risking being labeled queer by other men and having to confront harassment.
Lmfao that’s a great observation. Probably at least a big part of it.
I've pondered alpha male theory for a 5 years before having a solid conclusion before or against it. I rejected it. But yea, I really was that socially clueless, it took me 5 years as a late teen of observing and thinking about it to understand that life is more complicated than that and that the idea of alpha males is ridiculous, especially since I saw strong evidence on the contrary (i.e. "beta behaviors" and still having an amazing dating life, etc.).
See also depressed rats in stressful conditions becoming drug addicts.
Forget the captivity part, the fact that people aren't wolves is what always bothered me about this dumb idea.
If the Alpha Wolf is a myth, it is also a myth that the concept was bought to popular imagination by Rudolf Schenkel and L. David Mech between the 1940 and 1970s.
Jack London's gold rush books explore this concept in detail, the first of which, Call of the Wild, was published in 1903. These were very popular books, then and still today.
The alpha wolf concept was in public psyche at least in the early 1900s, but probably earlier too. I don't think it is likely that London invented this myth himself and it existed earlier.
Right. The myth actually originates from Social Darwinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism which was what influenced Jack London's thinking (see "The Call of the Wild", "White Fang" etc.) but at the same time he was also a Socialist (see "The Iron Heel", "The People of the Abyss" etc.) See his "views" section here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London#Views
Just to be clear, the word "alpha" does not appear in the text of "Call of the Wild".
1. There's still other species where an "alpha" exists.
2. Even if there's no other species where an "alpha" exists, what forbids us from it being a human thing? No that I want to look up to a mere mortal "alpha" e.g. dictators. Only real alpha is Christ.
3. There's always an alpha in friend groups, I've seen it, should I pluck out my eyes as they're lying to me? Heck no. Doesn't mean the women in the friend group took turns doing you know what to his you know what. An alpha is simple a leader, online manosphere groups took it to the extreme of being "the guy that gets most girls" but in truth being known helps with that whole thing.
4. Even my previous 3 points didn't resonate with you, it's just an allegory, I don't know why this particular alpha thing has hit a nerve with some many people, that even whole ass articles have been written up against it, what is the problem with men aspiring to be better? An alpha shares his spoils anyways, in Lions in Hyenas in Coyotes, etc.
Seems like it's fair to assume, both canines and humans are highly adaptable, and we behave the way we need to in the environment we're in. My dog has never shown me anything except love and compassion, and that gets him the best living conditions, back scratches and the tastiest food.
> Seems like it's fair to assume, both canines and humans are highly adaptable, and we behave the way we need to in the environment we're in.
If that were as true as you seem to be suggesting, there would be no difference between dogs and wolves when the latter are kept as pets, which is clearly false.
If the animals are spread over a wide area, where they don't have to compete for territory or resources with each other, of course the dominant behaviors won't rear themselves.
You need the right conditions to repro the behavior.
E.g. for starters, you cannot study one wolf in isolation from other wolves, right? You need at least two for one to dominate the other, and they can't be miles apart such that they never meet.
Does it even matter?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the "alpha myth" is actually true as it pertains to humans, and the most aggressive and dominating ones rise to the top.
Now look around you. Who are those people at the top of your society who unironically refer to themselves as "alphas" and embrace all the rhetoric around that, and what kind of world do they create around them?
Something similar happened with models for addiction in rats (which were extrapolated to humans)
It turned out that rats that live in a nice environment, with plenty of activities and social spaces (not an ugly, mostly empty cage), don’t become addicted
Ref: Rat Park experiment
The Internet loves the Rat Park experiment, but it never replicated and should be considered just as bogus as all the other stuff in social psych which hasn't survived the replication crisis.
It's fitting for this thread though, because it survives for the exact reason the alpha wolf stuff survives: people love the story so they hang on to it irrespective of the science.
> it never replicated and should be considered just as bogus
Did someone try to replicate it? What were the results? What were their conclusions about its credibility?
> all the other stuff in social psych which hasn't survived the replication crisis.
Replication isn't black and white: Most of the experiments - at least in the early widely reported phase - did replicate but with less statistically strong results.
I think 90% of my HS psych class didn't replicate
Can you elaborate more on this? I did not take psychology in high school, but I would imagine that such a course would focus on fundamental concepts where “replicating” wouldn’t even be an issue. There might be teachers who might bring up the pop-sci topics, but wouldn’t the meat of the class just be learning about theories or frameworks?
Not the OP and I didn’t take psych but here’s an example syllabus for AP Psychology from the College Board: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-psychology-s...
The first two units on neurology and cognition seem sensible, but I can see how it’ll quickly go off the rails after that.
This seems entirely fine, after a brief review of the contents. Where do you think it goes off the rails?
Wiki says:
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park#Further_experimentsRight, and we've seen plenty of people who lead the "Rat Park" equivalent of human lives and yet still get addicted to opioids. There's clearly no single cause.
It's stunning how so much of our own behavior, or at least explanations of it, reference what turns out to be almost entirely false conclusions. It could take 100 years to undo.
Before we start dishing on sociology as junk science, I'd like to point out that a lot of what we consider science as junk science.
For instance, take the myth of RICE to treat injuries. The myth lived for over 30 years before being debunked, but even a decade after it was soundly routed, we still find the advice in the wild.
https://thesportjournal.org/article/the-r-i-c-e-protocol-is-...
> Before we start dishing on sociology as junk science
How is sociology involved in this subthread or the OP? In the OP, the researchers have straightened out the issue and the general public ias confused.
oh yeah not about to do that, in these instances one hand washes the other — lots of junk sociology is based on junk science
A more cynical take could be that maybe it fits because we’ve constructed our own captivity or ‘prison conditions’ where this tends to emerge.
Out of curiosity, what conditions would you describe as prison-like that would drive someone to adopt an "alpha male" lifestyle in the US?
> Consider how this plays out in Silicon Valley, where the "move fast and break things" mentality has created a leadership culture that celebrates disruption over sustainability, dominance over collaboration.
That’s how the article phrased it. I’m not certain if I agree or not, but I’m not ready to either accept or dismiss it.
Ideology doesn't have to be 100% true to be effective. Goes all the way back to Plato's idea of the "noble lie".
Sometimes doesn't have to be 1% true!
It won't be undone because people want it to be true regardless of evidence. The cat (dog?) is out of the bag.
Postmodernism says there is no truth, only power and discussion airsuperiority derived from that. Thus alpha is a thing, reality be dammed .
Great article but is missing sources with citations so I ran the content against GPTZero's source finder - https://app.gptzero.me/documents/124f8c4d-9fd4-43c4-93f9-713...
Extremely interesting topic, unfortunately shallow article. Still I'm happy for the input.
I'd like to learn more about how abundance of food, lack of threats and other comforts of civilization distort the formerly vital instincts into all kind of dysfunctional and harming behavior. And more importantly, how to manage those.
Dubious article. The role of aggression in establishing and maintaining social hierarchies was not mis-diagnosed in 1974. The behaviors of alpha males (wolves) and alpha females (hyenas) are complex but threat and pain is part of the pattern. Highly variable by species, environment, and demographics.
Go over the hills from Silicon Valley to Ano Nuevo Marine Conservation Area and watch the behavior of male elephant seals like Bernie LeBoef has done for 30 years.
How does any of this apply to Silicon Valley other than as a cute and wrong metaphor? Are we really taking leads from dogs?
The popular trend in U.S. big business is 'animal spirits'. I read an article about how at Davos (iirc), people were bullish on the U.S. and bearish on Europe because the U.S. embraced "animal spirits".
Animal brains too.
The performative dominance described here feels eerily familiar
in any competence where you've taken instruction, you need to be practicing at a certain level to be able to receive meaningful direction or guidance. the same is true for leadership. the model in the article seems like a bit of a straw man that plays to a sense of resentfulness about cartoons of "alpha" figures, and it may ultimately be misleading by creating misguided critics.
just lift, read the stoics, and master something. you'll get there.
And what about chimpanzees? Our closest relative genetically. Is anyone disputing that they exhibit a brutally dominant social hierarchy? Our second closest relative is (afaik, or close enough) Bonobos, who lump around all day jacking each other off.
While the alpha terminology may have come from dog packs, it's not exactly unobservable in other species, and even on these forums and in VC funding rounds you can observe people both jacking each other off with a healthy amount of social and institutional pandering and financial support, and other people not posting as much but taking dominant positions to "secure the bag" and whatever is downstream from that.
People don't like these conversations but it doesn't change the reality.
Maybe a thing to note here is that the behavior of many different kinds of social animals changes dependent on the living situation.
Given that, it is not unreasonable to wonder (hope?) that there might be human living conditions that reduce "brutally dominant social heirarchy".
The best part is: we even appear to have archeological evidence that this is true, for humans!
We have tons of current evidence that its true. I've never experienced a 'brutally dominant social heirarchy' personally; it's pretty uncommon. I don't live like Lord of the Flies.
IME the theory is a reactionary (i.e., anti-liberal, anti-humanitarian, anti-human rights) myth to justify the rule and worship of power.
It's not at all uncommon, either in history or modern day. The stats on wealth inequality in the west demonstrate this out pretty clearly.
It's probably more viscerally visible in poorer parts of the world, though trying to compare which is worse, is not very clear. You could argue in the western countries it's easier for someone to become entrenched and cement a position of "top dog" while if you are in a tribe in Africa the position is more fluid and volatile.
I think using the term 'brutally dominant' I invoked images of violence, and maybe something like 'cut-throat' is (ironically) more apt. While you yourself may be in a good and comfortable position, it doesn't negate the reality that people vie for positions of power all over the world every day and have for the entirety of history. We are not just Bonobos living in a forest.
> reduce "brutally dominant social heirarchy".
if you mean literal brutality, but how the uber wealthy treating those of lower wealth could be considered brutal as well--in modern parlance of course.
I was quoting the comment I was replying to.
You can’t draw more than rudimentary conclusions from the comparison because we could have evolved different behaviors, or we could share them, or we could work that way on the savannah but not in a city, etc. These conversations can be and are used to say whatever the speaker wants to say, since they can just select a trait that’s been observed in a monkey case study and apply it lazily to humans. “Wow humans sure like to jerk off, must be because we’re like bonobos!”
> Is anyone disputing that they exhibit a brutally dominant social hierarchy?
Could you share the basis for saying they do, for those who are not primatologists?
> even on these forums and in VC funding rounds you can observe ...
How is that 'alpha wolf' behavior?
> People don't like these conversations
Has someone objected?
> Could you share the basis for saying they do, for those who are not primatologists?
You can look it up yourself, plenty of published research. I'm not a primatologist either but still managed to educate myself.
> Has someone objected?
You seem to be, in the most snide and backhanded way possible.
More generally yes people have been preaching (since the 60s majorly but obviously before that) that being kind, and that peace and love is and mutual reciprocity is not only one way to go about in life, but _it's the only way_ that you should pursue. And this very much the mainstream opinion. Meanwhile central banks have been printing money at zero interest to give to their friends, Saudis have been selling oil, states have been buying up weapons, bribing the US, etc.
And guess what? All of those people have lot more power and influence on the world today, than a guy living in the desert preaching how humans should be perfectly balanced at one with each and nature.
> How is that 'alpha wolf' behavior?
Zuckerberg retaining complete voting shares wasn't a power play? Altman returning to oust the board and be CEO of OpenAI wasn't a power play? Investors leveraging the outsized gains from an early success to bet on further outsized gains isn't a power play?
> Our second closest relative is (afaik, or close enough) Bonobos
They are equally close (tree-wise, percent-wise idk), and they exhibit a radically different and mostly nonviolent matriarchal social hierarchy. Not sure what the takeaway from that should be other than that maybe there shouldn't be a takeaway if our two closest relatives (and each others closest relatives) behave so differently from one another.
To me it's pretty obvious that we are somewhere in-between the two in temperament, but probably tending quite a bit more toward the chimps. I don't have a peer-reviewed study or empirical proof etc but some things are just staring you in the face. (see: all of history, boxing and MMA and other less violent but still highly competitive sports being popular worldwide)
I mean the interesting question is whether it is necessary, if we were maximally Bonobo would we have built the civilizations and technology we have? Possibly, but it's not beyond the realms of thought that the drive to amass power, to be the alpha or top dog, has driven action and risk taking, low probability paths to outsized gains.
There is a second question about whether we should be more Bonobo like now, but we are what we are and there is 7 billion people on the planet.
>People don't like these conversations but it doesn't change the reality.
I mean you have to be an idiot not to see it. You literally just observe all human societies. You have some leader at the top, the president, a king etc. etc. Then you have CEOs, VPs, Managers, team leads etc etc.
Human society is structured around alphas. Clearly. No I take that back. Humans are more similar to bonobos. At least that's how it is when I go to work we just jack each other off all day, no team leads or CEO where I work.
I think people run into definitional biases. I used alpha/beta as short hand in a comment last week and was downvoted just for using the terms.
In short, alpha does not imply male or violence. It’s someone for whatever reasons is at the top (eq, iq, physical attributes, confidence, etc). It also depends on the group, think big fish/small pond.
This essay is decent workplace leadership advice.
The connection to wolf pack social dynamics is very thin.
The author obviously wants to critique the machismo culture built into capitalism (which is totally fine!) but he seems to inherently subscribe to the naturalistic fallacy without being aware of it. Thus he feels the need to dismiss the idea of "alpha male" hierarchies in nature as non-existent as a way to dismiss them within our own society. You really don't need to do this and IMO, the flimsy premise of the start of his argument undermines his conclusion for society (which I actually agree with). Just because a certain type of sociological system exists within nature doesn't mean it's one we, as humans, should want for ourselves.
I find your lack of sources... disturbing.
The abuse of the captive wolves research factoid is officially run into the ground. We now blame it for the whole organisation of humanity. I thought bashing online communities for using “alpha” was inadequate, but that takes the cake.
I don't intend to put the blame on the wolf study. I think it's more that we are in captivity, and exhibit deeply unhealthy relationship patterns with pretty much our entire environment from food, to women, to time itself.
This assumes hunter gatherers were better off than we are today. That's a controversial claim. You still have to survive in nature with finding food and making shelter, fending off predators, negotiating rival groups, dealing with disease and injury. It wasn't some utopian existence.
I think there are good arguments that Hunter gathers ate healthier more diverse foods; spent less time working; and likely were in flow more often than we are today.
I think Sapiens talks about this.
The title says that captive wolves led us astray and the first paragraph asserts that the studies spawned decades of misunderstanding about power, leadership, and masculinity. The causal link is very dubious to say the least.
blaming the wolves is an interesting choice.
Regardless of the accuracy, analogizing to humans is absurd.
Some spiders eat their partner after mating, should we do that?
Some animals defecate to mark territory, should we do that?
Many abandon their children after birth or even eat their babies.
Maybe we should use artificial ovipositors and proboscises.
People want to ordain their ideology with the notion of natural order to claim it as scientific law. The accuracy of the underlying animal claim is irrelevant because the logic connecting some random animal to humans is nonsense.
I think causation is reversed. The goal of studies like these is not to dictate how we should behave, but to inform us how we might.
Should we use our feces to mark territory? Probably not, but when the concept of marking territory is as pervasive as it is then maybe it's worth considering how we would like to handle it to avoid falling back to feces.
Again, pervasiveness does not magically make it valid.
Many animals eat feces, that's extremely pervasive. It's an intrinsic part of the ecosystem. It's really hard to overstate how important poop from other animals is. Doesn't mean I should be cooking it for dinner.
Applying any behavior as having any meaning at all to humans, whether it be wolves or lobsters, other than that we should respect it, is complete nonsense.
There are no lessons to learn about how we should structure our workspace or allocate tax dollars by watching how jellyfish or seasnails live, any claim otherwise is merely ideological projection and creative license.
>> Some spiders eat their partner after mating, should we do that?
Have you spent time with many married couples? ;)
> Consider how these dynamics manifest in Silicon Valley, where Facebook's infamous "move fast and break things" mantra shaped a generation of tech culture. This emphasis on speed and disruption at any cost has created work environments that mirror the artificial pressures of captivity, where displaying dominance often takes precedence over fostering sustainable innovation. –
Yeaa..... this is a huge stretch. I'm not a hustle culture proponent by any means (Patagonia's 'let them go surfing' seems great to me!), but "Move fast and break things" is a pragmatic mantra that speaks to the nature of enterprises in highly competitive markets.
Laypeople will balk at the idea of "breaking things". But that's hubris. It takes humility to admit that the breaking things part of discovery and invention isn't isn't optional. Fast or slow, you will break things pursuing an idea unknown space. The mantra speaks to the need to adjust risk tolerances in futuristic-leaning businesses.
There are other ways, of course. Bio-med breaks things in controlled trials, for example. But it's also slow as molasses. Rife with in-fighting.
But to equate alpha-male captivity with futuristic pragmatism is a huge reach.
The Alpha thing was always cringy. Reminded me of the way people used to take Buzzfeed quizzes that would define who they are. "It says I'm a Gryffindor because I'm brave!". Identity is a bottomless pit of manipulation and self-delusion.
I'm in disagree. They wolves tent to have a "big bad wolf". Now most wolves would never enter a house and eat bear soup, but some ofthe are quit psychopathic and can bring food back for the pack.
What this article doesn't mention is the eating of puppies. The big bad wolf is not a gentle wolf.
wd
This thread is a hiring manager's dream; imagine identifying a candidate's emotional intelligence through their HN comments. Woof, indeed.
When a Canadian psychologist mentioned lobsters and hierarchies, the dogma to which members of a political group subscribe was updated to include the denial of alphas as a natural phenomenon, making it instead an artificial construct invented by their imaginary oppressors to hold onto imaginary power.
We have many real life human "experiments" that can be looked to in determining if the "alpha" concept is a "more successful" model in business. This is particularly true in areas where demand for highly qualified employees outstrips supply - such as many flavors of software development.
If the 'alpha' model is universally detrimental to success in business, it would quickly die out.
However it has not and most modern (and premodern) successful companies (by metrics of growth, profit, income, revenue, PE etc) have been founded and grown by "alpha" leaders and staff.
There are of course exceptions but we would expect the "alpha" model to instead be the exception if it was a less successful way of running a business.
In practice, both can co-exist and as a company matures it may, over time, switch between models.
Some people like the driven competitive environment and seek it out and will tend to end up at enterprises that favor the "alpha" model. Others who dislike such environments will seek out enterprises that utilize alternative models. An individual will likely be more productive in the environment best suited for them and an individual will rarely switch from a strong preference for one of these environments to a strong preference for an alternative environment.
If there is substantial dissatisfaction on the part of workers with the "alpha" model and an alternative model would be more productive and successful, startups would blossom that use alternative models and hire away the cream of the crop of the "alpha" companies' employees.
This is writing of someone steeped in "alpha male" youtube & podcast ideology.
What he calls the “alpha” model might also be termed a “leader-follower” model where a single authority drives a team to accomplish his singular vision, like the captain of a ship drives and disciplines his crew.
It’s hierarchical and masculine, no doubt, and describes Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs as well as Walt Disney and Thomas Edison or even General Patton.
This leadership model might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it can definitely be successful, and it’s definitely a real thing, not just some redpill / PUA fantasy.
>However it has not and most modern (and premodern) successful companies (by metrics of growth, profit, income, revenue, PE etc) have been founded and grown by "alpha" leaders and staff.
Citation needed. By my estimation, the overwhelming majority of CEOs are doughy, effete city slickers who are the exact opposite of the prototypical "alpha male" image.
Zuckerberg, with his MMA training, might be the only one I can think of that fits the stereotype.
Don't confuse the putative "alpha male" with simply being a douchebag, because I can think of quite a large number of CEOs that fit that latter description, but it's not the same thing.
And by definition, Zuckerberg didn't start out as an "alpha", but decided to emulate one after he was already super-wealthy.
Bezos too. And Elon.
> Don't confuse the putative "alpha male" with simply being a douchebag, because I can think of quite a large number of CEOs that fit that latter description, but it's not the same thing.
Can you clarify the distinction? Most people criticising the "alpha" model seem to equate the two.
> grown by "alpha" leaders and staff.
Umm... isn't the whole point of an "alpha" to be the top-man... so how would there be more than one? That doesn't make any internally logical sense.
> An individual will likely be more productive in the environment best suited for them
Good premise, but you don't need the "alpha" theory to argue it.
> in determining if the "alpha" concept is a "more successful" model in business.
You do a really poor job of explaining what this even means, but it sounds bogus from your description. No offense intended.
> isn't the whole point of an "alpha" to be the top-man... so how would there be more than one?
The point is they're top of their pack, not top of the whole world.
Right. And my point is that a “pack” of “alphas” is nonsensical.
Reads like a Disney lens on nature. Whether or not wolves have a single alpha in a pack, nature is built around selfishness and violence with certainty, cooperation selectively. Animals watch each other suffer and die without a flinch all the time. And nearly everything dies from being eaten. Any lens on nature that sugar-coats this is projecting human values.
> Reads like a Disney lens on nature
The author isn't saying nature isn't cruel. They're saying wolf packs don't work the way we imagine them to in popular culture.
You don't have males duking it out to be the alpha. (That's closer to gorillas and chimpanzees, though even among them it's rare.) You have a breeding pair and their pups. Wolf packs aren't monarchies, they're emergent clusters of wolves around a breeding pair that goes away when the breeding pair perishes. A younger wolf "challenging" an older wolf for dominance isn't the natural state; it's the space-constrained state that emerges in captivity. (Even that might be giving it too much credit.)
Nature is not 'build around selfishness and violence'. Any lens on nature that says this is projecting human values.
Nature is build around what works best for the survival of the individual's genetics in the current environment. That is called evolution.
You can't even project the human concept of selfishness on this. A worker ant supports its genetical survival best by sacrificing its life for the community.
To understand evolutionary developed strategies a wonderful tool is the calculation of probability. Science knows something about how to choose good strategies, and that may help us to understand 'why' evolution optimized for this and that.
In the case of groups of hunters (or many other groups), we know that cooperation is often superior to constant internal fighting. And choosing the best strategic thinker as the leader instead of the biggest bully is obviously a good idea in many scenarios. It is very reasonable that the wolves' leader selection process has optimised itself in such a direction.
Elephants live in complex, matriarchal family groups and demonstrate extraordinary empathy
and animals support and comfort each other without hesitation all the time too.
and "nearly everything dies from being eaten", yes, because nearly everything is in the human meat eating food chain, I kid you not.
no. the lens that depicts the world at constant war is projecting a mix of maybe personal experience and certainly group think onto an otherwise surprisingly cooperative and supportive nature.
https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=coope...
> selfishness and violence
Are human emotions, please don't anthropomorphise.
Neither of those are emotions.
Selfishness is the default setting, and is easy to explain in evolutionary terms. Unselfishness is what usually surprises us when we see it in animals.
Surprises you perhaps. Over 90% of plants rely on cooperation with mycorrhizal fungal networks. The evolution of lichen, a partnership between fungi and lichen, has happened independently tens of thousands of times. Our very cells rely on a once-alien cell with its own DNA that is now called the "mitochondria" for our very survival. Even still, the majority of cells in the human body are usually non-human. We literally couldn't eat a single thing without the complex multi-species microbes we rely on.
Cooperation is at the basis of all of nature. The difference between "competition" and "cooperation" is usually a matter of perspective and human bias. They are two sides of the same coin. We fit details about nature into one of those two frameworks to uphold a specific worldview we find useful for organizing information. Historically we've favored the competition framework, but take a look at the Annual Reviews journals for a field like Ecology, Mycology, Biology, etc and I think you'll see this is quickly changing