TIL I am an alpha male after all…
Hey hey hey!
We’re Werewolves, not Swearwolves
I think “alpha” males appear naturally in some species, but not in wolves and definitely not in hominids, lol.
Silverback gorilla has entered the chat
Apparently there’s some disagreement about whether any of the other modern great apes should be included in the “hominid” definition, though.
No there isn’t, they are. Says right there in hominidae.
You might be thinking of hominin.
I find it fascinating how oblivious people pretend to be about what our natural social hierarchies are, making fringe speculations ranging from proto-capitalism, over alpha male fantasies, to proto-communism.
Maybe it’s too obvious, or too boring, but it’s families. Incidentally, happens to be the same for actual, natural packs of wolves.
I find it most fascinating how they take (supposed) observations from entirely different animals to justify what’s happening with humans.
For a mantis it’s natural to eat her partner right after sex. For mussels it’s natural to never meet their sexual partner. Obviously what’s natural for a mantis is not natural for mussels and vice versa. With that established, why would any of that have an influence on how humans behave?
And to take that further, wolves, different kinds of primates and all sorts of other animals that people draw comparisons from are also wildly different animals from humans and what’s normal for them is not normal for us and vice-versa.
And not only that, but even what’s “natural” for primitive humans has nothing to do with what we are doing. It’s “natural” for humans to live in small packs/clans in the semi-wildernis, not to live in a perfectly safe, air conditioned building, driving to work in a fast, safe, air-conditioned vehicle and then sit motionless in front of a screen in an air-conditioned building for 8-10h.
Nothing of how we live is natural, and finding justifications on how we as humans work in “natural” states is misguided at best.
Also: unstable and not fit for public release
Weird how that attracts a certain crowd
Counterpoint:
Humans in a civilized (meaning urbanized) society… are domesticated, are basically in captivity, from the comparative framework of wild animals.
CounterCounterpoint:
Using studies on captive wolves as a fundamental basis for how human societies do or should work…
… Is maybe really stupid compared to, I don’t know, using Sociology as a basis to understand human societies.
Sociology being the field that focuses on the social dynamics of uh, humans, which are markedly different from wolves, and other distinct, largely non sapient animals.
Its uh, kinda in our name, homo sapiens sapiens.
Humans in a civilized (meaning urbanized) society… are domesticated, are basically in captivity, from the comparative framework of wild animals.
What about urban existence resembles captivity? You aren’t constrained geographically or denied personal autonomy. In fact, you have significantly more freedom and autonomy precisely because you’re at the hub of a large, well-developed collection of infrastructure and accumulated resources.
I would not consider a human in a city any more “in captivity” than a duck in a lake.
Its uh, kinda in our name, homo sapiens sapiens.
So nice they named us twice
You aren’t constrained geographically or denied personal autonomy.
Nation-State Borders.
Sorry, you can’t leave Gaza, you’re not allowed to.
You need a ticket to attend this concert.
You will be arrested or shot on sight if you enter this facility without authorization.
Sure, you can download a movie, but thats a crime, so really, you can’t.
Sure, you can hack into a Tesla and drive off with it, but thats also a crime, so really, you can’t.
Whites Bathroom on the Left, Negroes on the Right.
Japanes heritage in the 1940s?
Off to a concentration camp, all your property is forfeit.
Hispanic, or even just brown skinned in current year?
Same.
Only the Preist may enter the Holy of Holies.
etc etc.
…
And even less overt things than that:
You can’t go to this club, this bar, this concert dressed like that, talking like that.
No, you cannot go outside nude, thats generally a crime.
You can’t say those words, love that person, speak that language, have that opinion or belief, not without social ostricisization or even incarceration.
…
In fact, you have significantly more freedom and autonomy precisely because you’re at the hub of a large, well-developed collection of infrastructure and accumulated resources.
Sure, if you’re in the global top 1% to 5 % of people wealthy enough to afford all those things that you can now do via the exploitation and reduction of freedom of the other 99% to 95%.
Everyone else has to go back to work, or they get evicted, starve and die.
The duck can fly away and never return, if it wants to.
A human can only do that to the extent it has money.
… We just live in a more complicated Zoo with more rules, that we built for ourselves, compared to ourselves 100,000 years ago.
I am not saying there are no upsides to civilization.
I am just saying you maybe need a different frame of reference to see the differences, the downsides.
There are two kinds of freedom, and you are mixing these up.
There’s positive and negative freedom. Negative freedom is “freedom of”, while positive freedom is “freedom to”.
Negative freedom means I don’t have to follow rules. Nobody tells me what to do or not to do. A man starving in the desert has perfect negative freedom. He can choose completely freely on which dune to die, nobody’s there to stop him or to tell him what to do.
Positive freedom means I have more choices. A good example is the highway system. I can drive at any time of day or night into any direction I want to at a very high speed and quite high safety. I have more freedom of movement than kings had 200 years ago.
Positive and negative freedom often contradict. Again, the highway system is a good example: The only reason I can safely and quickly drive wherever I want is because of the highway code (or equivalent depending on the country). There’s a huge rule work with rules upon rules on what I can and cannot do, and only the fact that most people follow these rules quite closely enables fast and safe travels for me.
A large portion about the “missing freedoms” you describe are only possible because people follow rules. If there was no rule of law, then there would be no club, there would be no concert and so on.
And that’s why the “domestication is captivity” argument of yours falls flat. Captivity takes freedoms without returning anything. If you sit in jail, there’s a lot less things you can do compared to when you don’t sit in jail. “Domestication” sacrifices some negative freedoms (aka you need to follow rules) but in turn you get positive freedoms that are completely out of this world compared to how people used to live.
Compare the things you can do (never be hungry, live in a heated/cooled building, travel around the world if you want to, learn whatever you want whenever you want, never be bored due to endless entertainment, and so on and so on) with the things a “wild” human from 100 000 years ago could do.
This massive increase in freedom is in no way comparable to captivity, which just takes freedom without giving anything in return.
I mean, your two types of freedom discourse is largely correct, but this is missing the point I am making.
My original point is that civilization essentially is a form of self-domestication.
Then comes someone to attempt to disprove this by basically turning this into a discussion of comparative freedoms and standards of living.
Sure, ok but thats a non sequitur, its talking around my point, my claim, instead of actually challenging it.
Yep, we generally have more freedom from starvation, disease, etc.
The trade off is that we have more requirements of other kinds and less freedoms of other kinds.
This has nothing to do with the fact of domestication, it has to do with determining whether or not it is good or desireable.
At no point have I said anything like ‘it was better before we invented cities and civilization and industrial technology.’
That would be a different claim, where what you point out would be relevant, but its not the claim I’ve made.
Also, captivity does not return nothing, strictly necessarily speaking within the original domain specific comparison of animal captivity, also the history of civilization very much includes the history of slavery, and yep, your definition of domestication agrees with what I am saying, have said.
You and underpantsweevil have both assumed I am making some kind of moral, ethical, ‘should be’ type claim.
Nope, I am not, I am just pointing out that civilized society is way different than 100k BCE society, and that if you time teleported a person from that era to our modern era, they’d likely describe the experience of integrating into our society as similar to being made into a pet, or perhaps highly ritualistic social role from their society, that they would feel like they were acting or performing in a world of millions of rules, and expected to do so all the time.
You are using a motte-and-bailey switch right now.
Nobody was talking against the self-domestication point. That one is your bailey argument: A simple, easy-to-defend stantement that means very little and is largely correct.
The motte argument that everyone was contending was that domestication equals captivity. That one is a garbage claim that just doesn’t hold up.
You lead with the domestication equals captivity point and when you got called out on it you are now trying to switch from your motte argument to the bailey argument, claiming that this was what you were saying all along and not acknowleding that you switched arguments half-way in between.
And yes, equalling domestication and captivity is a moral, ethical, ‘should-be’ claim, and you repeated doing so in this last comment of yours as well by equalling the cuman condition with animal captivity while bringing up slavery in the same line which actually is quite close to animal captivity. The general human condition in 2025 does not equal slavery.
The only way you would seriously make that argument is if you either have no idea what slavery is (which I doubt) or if you want to claim that slavery is not “some kind of moral, ethical, ‘should be’ type” of problem.
And if you can’t see problems with slavery, we might have a bigger issue at hand.
Again, no, you’re wrong, you are thinking I made a claim I didn’t make, and at this point are just generally not able to read and parse what I am saying without imposing your own incorrect interpretation on it.
I am making a semantic, definitional, technical ‘claim’ or argument, not a moral one.
Also, specifically to slavery and captivity, If you think slavery existed before civilization, anthropological and historical data strongly suggest you are wrong, slavery came about with civilization.
For a more modern and widrspread comparison of animal captivity to modern human society, consider prisons, incarceration, whch also came about with civilization, particularly became more widesprrad with industrial civilization.
But anyway, I won’t be arguing with you on this anymore, as you are determined to continuously misconstrue what I am saying.
If your point is semantic or definitional, then it needs to follow the semantics and definition of the word you are referring to. Not being able to steal things or consume services without paying for them is not captivity.
Your point is that you made up a definition and then claim that this definition is correct.
Nothing you’re describing has to do with “cities”. Certainly, none of these conditions somehow improve in a state of nature, either.
If anything, the philosophic underpinnings of your critiques are rooted in the large, surplus rich, heavily bureaucratic academic institutions that civilization produces. “Open borders” without roads, “civil rights” without courts and adjudicators, “downloading a movie” without telecommunications and Hollywood scale production companies, “Desegregated bathrooms” without indoor plumbing… its all meaningless.
You can’t simultaneously insist shitting in the woods, bored out of your mind, stuck at the bottom of a gully, as you’re about to get pounced on by a wild cat is a valuable perspective and then complain that the public library you just drove to where you’d like to use the free wifi to steal movies doesn’t have egalitarian toilet setups. You’ve put the cart a mile ahead of the horse.
Almost none of the things I listed could or have existed without cities, historically, anthropologically.
Civilization brings technologies and living standard improvements, and the price that is paid for these is a symmetrically increasing body of rules and norms… which definitionally restrict autonomy.
Yeah, true, total freedom and autonomy is terrifying and dangerous.
But it is true and total freedom.
I am not complaining that a public library has segregated bathrooms and that this is objectively worse in every way possible than being pounced by a leopard while trying to shit in the jungle.
You are shifting the conversation to ‘what is generally better’… when the original issue was ‘civilization requires following rules that restrict freedom and autonomy.’
I am not an anarcho primitivist, I do not think ‘return to the wild’ is any kind of a good idea.
But, when I say that civilization roughly is domestication, is captivity… it is pertinent to fully compare and contrast all the actual differences, so that you can actually see, understand, and appreciate them.
…
Maybe a more simple example would work.
Your pet cat probably can’t actually hunt for shit.
It has been domesticated, learned how to scream when its food bowl isn’t full, not how to actually hunt that well.
Ok, now, humans, also, even pretending we haven’t largely destroyed the biosphere for the sake of an easier comparison…
We generally also can’t hunt for shit, because what we do when we are hungry is drive to the grocery store.
But, 100k years ago, no such thing as a grocery store existed, you more or less needed to be part of a small band capable of hunting and gathering and cooking their own food.
This is a rather straightforward example of how civilization roughly is equivalent (from the point of view of a wild animal, or pre-civilized human) to us domesticating ourselves.
We’ve lost some skills, gained others.
Its a trade off.
…
Obviously civilization is far more complex than just domestication, but domestication is a pretty fundamental part of civilization.
Why did we domesticate dogs and cats?
Well, it was mutually beneficial.
We got uh… well I guess Gods and rodent control from cats, we got loyal hunting partners that are also goofy and doofy from dogs… and they got a lot closer to the grocery store paradigm, pretty quickly.
I am guessing you live in a home of some kind, probably?
Congrats, you are domesticated, don’t piss off your HOA, don’t forget to pay your mortgage, rent, don’t annoy the neighbors, don’t start an industrial machine workshop in your backyard, check your local ordinances before you set up a rain catcher, etc.
You have to use parables to teach moral concepts to most people. Sociology is very valuable as a science, but if you come at the general public with unvarnished findings you are going to have a bad time, few will listen to you.
The old alpha male trope is a parable that serves some narrow interests. The newer counter parables about how that is BS are based in observations from sociology, later generations of more rigorous animal behavior studies and related fields.
You are correct that good scientific work is the source of what we need. The equally difficult truth is that those findings will only make their way into general consciousness through parables.
This one weird fact drives nerds crazy, but for newer, better ideas to take hold in society they have to be translated into simple stories.
You have to use parables to teach moral concepts to most people.
This one weird fact drives nerds crazy, but for newer, better ideas to take hold in society they have to be translated into simple stories.
As a person with a career in data analytics…
You are completely correct.
When talking to non nerds, non autists, non data wonks…
Yep, 100% you absolutely must be able to present your data as a narrative of some kind if you want to have any hope of most people having any reaction other than confusion or their eyes glossing over.
I have learned this the hard way in my own life, and its why people like Sagan and Nye and Tyson were/are science communicators, which is a different skillset from being an actual scientist in whatever field.
People of science understand, without the parables, because they have the working and “book” knowledge to interpret the relative meaning of the presented data. To communicate the meaning relative data, without the background knowledge, and without taking the time to learn (or even package for small, focused learning) it is easier to understand, if put into a relative comparable, with similar, relative distance, or changes. Especially when people are already overloaded with *gestures towards everything. The way to eat an elephant, small bites. It’s an elephant to people without all that back knowledge or ability to interpret the science, so you gotta break it into small bites for them, using your understanding.
One of the most discouraging moments in my training was when I was looking into the literature around Decision Support Systems, in the context of Geographic Information Systems as a tool for supporting complex efforts.
Over and over, no matter the specific focus of a study, the authors would reiterate that no matter the quality of the information produced by the decision support system, decision makers were more likely to go with solutions supported by people the decision makers considered to be peers, even when the hard data showed that the opposite course was more justified.
In short, CEOs and similar almost always care more about the opinions of other CEOs than being true to the scientific ideal.
So to go back to the name of our species, ‘homo sapiens’ as a name is aspirational, not reflective of fact.
Perhaps ‘homo recumbens’ would be more appropriate as a descriptor, but I prefer we keep the current name so as to at least give us something to strive for.
The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.
Terry Pratchett
Over and over, no matter the specific focus of a study, the authors would reiterate that no matter the quality of the information produced by the decision support system, decision makers were more likely to go with solutions supported by people the decision makers considered to be peers, even when the hard data showed that the opposite course was more justified.
In short, CEOs and similar almost always care more about the opinions of other CEOs than being true to the scientific ideal.
Extremely ironically, what this means is that the actual prime candidate for a job to replace with AI…
Is CEOs, C Suite.
They are the most expensive employees, after all.
Maybe not replace them with LLMs as we currently have them, beyond possibly being used to generate a narrative, human readable explanation of their decision making process and policies…
Where the actual decision making and policy determinations would themselves be decided by basically a much more specialized algorithm, that is made out of code a human can actually read.
Like, we’ve already got Zoom entirely seriously trying to get AI-LLMs that train themselves on your work emails and chats, then make an avatar emulation of ‘you’, then send that to digital meetings, then output the chat log ‘results’ of this ‘meeting’.
So, there you go.
C Suite doesn’t really do anything beyond networking and corpo politics, this can simulate that, minus the off the record corruption, which shouldn’t be a problem, right?
… Its always been about power and social status.
If otherwise, they’d all be developing something along the lines of what I just described, putting themselves out of a job, and retiring on their already massive wealth.
No, they don’t do that.
They are addicted to being superior, to being able to ruin people.
They’re dangerous petty narcissistic sociopaths.
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I guess. I was able to engage in real conversation on Reddit and still do here, sounds like you’ve not really trying.
You’re on a 1 day old account with only 4 comments. You haven’t even tried to have a conversation yet. You’re also on the lemmy.world instance which is as close to Reddit as Lemmy gets, so what would you expect? Maybe try a different instance that’s closer to what you’re looking for.
It’s just nonsense for people who are too asocial and alien to the human experience to make sense of the world and feel better about themselves by having some sort of binary ‘strict goals’. You’re supposed to be somewhere ‘in the middle’ for best results: kind but not a doormat, confident but not arrogant, engaging but not domineering, etc etc.
Among dogs there is certainly the one dog that has the respect of the other dogs. The other dogs will happily wag their tail and show their belly. The ones that challange it will be chased away. I think each sex in the community has a ‘leader’ of their own.
I think the equivalent in humans are charismatic individuals that command respect over their surrounding.
People who self-proclaim ‘alpha’ usually lack charisma, are agressive, dysfunctional individuals that live in a fantasy. Noone respects them. They may see them as crazy and hence fear them.
You’re probably talking about literally the same: random dogs thrown spacially together where they naturally would avoid each other if they could. Which, in the modern days, they can’t. Especially not when leached.
I observe this in the stray dog population. There is always one calm and confident dog like this.
And? Of course there is. They’re also on a spectrum. Everyone is everything to some degree.
i mean we’ve got that one cat that beats up all the other cats and dogs in the neighborhood and everyone knows to keep their distance. pecking order I think it’s called.
Alpha means “first”, it does not mean “wolf who fights other wolves while in captivity according to one study.”
Do people not know this?
No, alpha is the anglicization of the first letter of the greek alphabet. It doesn’t mean ‘first’ any more than the letter A does.
You’re wrong according to any dictionary ever printed, sorry.
It has more than one definition, and one of those is “first”, and you must accept that as fact.
In correct. “It” does have many definitions, but none of them are ‘first’.
You’re wrong, according to the definition, anyway. You should let Oxford know that you know better! I’m sure they will crown you as king.
I see that my definition comes before yours, so I am king.
That’s neat! A heavy crown to bear.
I’m glad you learned something today… now go forth, and sin no more.
You could say… that your favorite definition is the “alpha” of definitions.
A crown made of internet points isn’t heavy at all.
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I’m right still, you are wrong! Alpha is not problematic in any way. It’s in the Bible (the best selling book on Earth, at least at one time), it’s used in pop culture while not referring to the study in any way. So now annoying people use “alpha” just like “king” and “prince” and “the best” and “the greatest”.
You’ll all get over it soon, as usual. I promise.
p.s as per your question, yes I do know of it, as stated in my post that you responded to. I’m sorry that referring to it was an inadequate indicator that I knew of it, so I’m guessing your question is a joke? I mean, it’s obvious.
“I am the alpha and the omega” only means “I am the beginning and the end” because alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha does not mean “first” in Greek you smug dipshit.
Wow, this is big news… you should write Webster, Oxford, et al immediately and let everyone know they’ve made a massive mistake! Thank you for saving us from this horrid linguistic error!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alpha
You are 100% wrong, and not even worth an insult. You bring shame to your family and make me sad.
What’s it like living inside of your own asshole?
I don’t know, you tell me… here we are having a nice discussion, and why are you thinking of assholes? Nasty.
Alpha means first, as it has for millennia. Get mad about it
I’m not mad, I’m laughing at you. You’re a joke. Keep it up, I love a good laugh.
Laugh more! Meanwhile, alpha still means first in every dictionary ever printed.
Ha!
You’re funny.
Gee. It’s almost like language evolves!
Get bent you rape apologist
Think about rape out of nowhere some more, that will surely prove you’re not a vile worm
The president is a rapist and you’re here calling me thinking about rape out of nowhere, get your head out of your fucking ass
You’re obsessed with rape and now ass. Get help
It does! However, alpha still means “first”, as it always has. The word predates the study by centuries.
I know, not scientifically real, but you have to admit, there are in fact alpha and beta folks in the human population, both men and women. We used to call them type A and type B personalities, same difference.
Anyway, I’m in some kinda weird half-and-half place. :) “On the spectrum”, if you will. Dominant in some ways, but not enough to stomp people out of my way, empathetic enough to be seen as a “good guy”. Whatever. I’m just happy I didn’t land on either far side. Can you imagine being a wuss and having dreams of “alpha”? The mind recoils.
Anyway, I’m in some kinda weird half-and-half place. :) “On the spectrum”, if you will.
Hey, maybe people are not binary and everyone is “on the spectrum”? Maybe that’s why trying to put everyone into A and B boxes doesn’t make much sense?
There are not only two personalities
both men and women
There are also not only two genders
There’s only two of anything if you define broadly enough. There’s only two kinds of people: • those who have passed a kidney stone and those who haven’t • those who currently have a single testicle and those who don’t
There are two types of people, those who admit they pee in the shower and liars.
I have a signed document pledging the right testicle of a highschool friend that I technically own and will collect upon his death. I don’t know how many testicles I have.
I didn’t make that up for a hypothetical. This is how I live.
you and me should be friends. what’s a life without an ambiguous number of body parts?
Let’s do it, but only if this online friendship doesn’t lead to a chance meetcute where my friend dies and the will is contested, and you happen to be the best damn testicle lawyer this side of the Mississippi River.
I’ve already given up on love and nothing will thaw this icy heart. Not even the best damn testicle lawyer this side of the Mississippi River.
Oh, my brother is the best damn testicle lawyer this side of the Mississipp. I’m just a collector.
Blood related, adopted, or is it more of a spiritual relationship? (For sex reasons)
does my jar collection count
Different people have different personalities? That’s how humans work. It’s not neatly categorizable. Not even on a single sliding axis. Multiple sliding axis for different traits is more like it.
Anyway, I’m in some kinda weird half-and-half place.
Like everyone else then.
We used to call them type A and type B personalities,
Who’s “we”? A quick glance at Wikipedia gives me the impression that it’s the American tobacco industry and “scientists” on their payroll. Hopefully you are not one of them.
Who’s “we”?
Probably OP Commentor is using the Pluralis Majestatis (the royal we)
