Do note how you obtain better results if you know to ask nicely.
I think “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” should be a rationalism quote.
My main point is that the Bonobo social organization puts, to say the least, a very different set of connotations on the term “alpha” than it carries in everyday discourse or in PUA lore, and that we should look with at least some caution at our theories of dominance as applied to the human animal.
Taking facts about primate dominance hierarchies and just assuming they map onto humans is certainly epistemologically irresponsible. But given that dominance hierarchies appear, in one form or another, throughout the rest of the primate kingdom, I would be quite surprised if there weren’t similar features in human social organization. Pick up artist literature, the successes of the movement aside, is certainly not a serious scientific attempt to assert a theory of dominance hierarchies in humans. But since dominance hierarchies play an incredibly significant role in mate selection among primates, one way to detect dominance hierarchies among humans, I think, is to pay attention to who has their pick of the opposite sex. So I find it highly plausible that who PUA/every day discourse would refer to as “alpha” is approximately who a socio-biological analysis of human groups would refer to as “alpha”.
One of the reasons the dominance theory perspective on status appeals to people here, I suspect, is that it happens to do a pretty good job reflecting how status plays out in our lives. There is a reason “alpha” talk was adopted in the first place. Traits that are like the behavior of bottom of the hierarchy primates indicates low status in humans (small size, passivity, few if any mating prospects) and traits that are like that of top of the hierarchy primates indicates high status (size, aggression, mates the most). All else being equal, that is. Obviously this is all complicated in humans by wealth, governments, class, culture etc. But it makes a lot of sense to look to dominance hierarchies as the evolutionary source of human status. We can test this hypothesis: What I listed above as the traits associated with the different ends of status hierarchies in primates is all I know and mostly based on recollection and common knowledge. Assuming there are primatologist accounts of additional behaviors associated with the different ends of the dominance hierarchies we can check to see if they correspond to our notion of status.
I think “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” should be a rationalism quote.
Taking facts about primate dominance hierarchies and just assuming they map onto humans is certainly epistemologically irresponsible. But given that dominance hierarchies appear, in one form or another, throughout the rest of the primate kingdom, I would be quite surprised if there weren’t similar features in human social organization. Pick up artist literature, the successes of the movement aside, is certainly not a serious scientific attempt to assert a theory of dominance hierarchies in humans. But since dominance hierarchies play an incredibly significant role in mate selection among primates, one way to detect dominance hierarchies among humans, I think, is to pay attention to who has their pick of the opposite sex. So I find it highly plausible that who PUA/every day discourse would refer to as “alpha” is approximately who a socio-biological analysis of human groups would refer to as “alpha”.
One of the reasons the dominance theory perspective on status appeals to people here, I suspect, is that it happens to do a pretty good job reflecting how status plays out in our lives. There is a reason “alpha” talk was adopted in the first place. Traits that are like the behavior of bottom of the hierarchy primates indicates low status in humans (small size, passivity, few if any mating prospects) and traits that are like that of top of the hierarchy primates indicates high status (size, aggression, mates the most). All else being equal, that is. Obviously this is all complicated in humans by wealth, governments, class, culture etc. But it makes a lot of sense to look to dominance hierarchies as the evolutionary source of human status. We can test this hypothesis: What I listed above as the traits associated with the different ends of status hierarchies in primates is all I know and mostly based on recollection and common knowledge. Assuming there are primatologist accounts of additional behaviors associated with the different ends of the dominance hierarchies we can check to see if they correspond to our notion of status.