The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1375: Alphas | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

Think you need to be an "alpha" to win? Nick Pell debunks the wolf-pack myth and reveals what actually earns respect here on Skeptical Sunday!Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Nick Pell!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1375On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:An "alpha" is supposedly the dominant top dog — the leader who takes 90% of life's spoils while the lesser "betas" scrap for crumbs. But the whole pecking order traces back to a 1940s study of captive wolves crammed into a pen — the "wolf prison yard," not real pack life.The biologist who made "alpha" famous, L. David Mech, spent decades disavowing his own bestseller. The so-called alpha wolves aren't the toughest fighters who clawed their way up — they're just the parents. The pack defers to them because they bring the food.Humans didn't conquer the planet by bullying — we did it by cooperating. We're "obligate cooperators," self-domesticated apes who arguably bred aggression out of ourselves. Nobody builds a pencil, let alone a moon rocket, alone. Dominance is a liability, not a cheat code.Real influence runs on prestige, not dominance (a distinction from anthropologist Joseph Henrich). Fear makes people hide problems — think D-Day, when nobody dared wake Hitler, or Vietnam-era "fragging." Domineering bosses get avoided; competent ones get followed.Want to actually lead? Drop the dominance act and build competence instead. Lead by example, stay approachable so small problems reach you while they're still small, and treat people as collaborators rather than rivals. Prestige is freely given — and it's what makes people want to follow you.Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know!And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: Zenni: 15% off your first order: zenni.com/podcast, code PODCAST15Xero: One month of Xero for free: xero.comNOBL: Up to 46% off: nobltravel.com, tell them we sent youCastbox: Find, organize, and subscribe to the world's best podcasts: castbox.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. We had the best time in Victoria, BC, staying with our friend Chad, who lives up there, also happens to be an incredible fitness trainer, leave it to Chad to sneak a strength training block into a relaxing vacation. But staying with somebody local, it made the whole trip feel different. It wasn't the tourist version of Victoria. It was the Here's What You Actually Need to See version. We flew on a seaplane, wandered Government Street and Fantan Alley, found an amazing

coffee spot, hiked Mount Douglas Park for this incredible 360-degree view over the whole city. and that's the kind of travel experience people actually remember. It's also what makes listing your space on Airbnb in Canada so practical. While you're away, your home doesn't have to sit empty. It can become part of someone else's trip. Maybe you love your quiet street, your walkable neighborhood, the coffee shop around the corner, the nearby trails, the cozy backyard at your stay,

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Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, researcher, and fellow alpha male, Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life, and those around you.

And our mission is to help you become a better-informed more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, it's Skeptical Sunday, a rotating guest co-host, and I break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as internet porn, chem trails, ban foods, toothpaste, crystal healing, diet pills, bottled water, and more. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, and I always appreciate it when you do that. I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on

persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, crime and cults, and more to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. All right, today on the show, somewhere online, you may have been yelled at by a guy in a fitted polo shirt telling you how to be an alpha male. It's the ultimate online shorthand, this idea that human society is a rigid hierarchy where you're either the silver back leading the troop or a beta waiting for scraps. It's moved from dark corners of pick-up artist forums, which I am unfortunately quite familiar with, straight into mainstream corporate leadership seminars and girl boss TikTok, promising that if you just fix your posture

and you project, you assert dominance, the world will finally hand you the keys to the kingdom. The problem is that Alpha has become essentially the astrology of the insecure. It's a seductive, simple story that we use to explain away why we didn't get to promotion or why a second date didn't happen. We're told it's biological, which makes it feel like some kind of unchangeable law of nature. It's flattering if you think you got it and a convenient excuse if you don't. But the moment you poke at the actual science, the whole thing starts to look less like a nature documentary and more like a house of cards built on a total. understanding of how animals, including humans, actually function. Here today to help us separate the leaders from the loudmouths is writer and researcher

Nick Pell. Nick, you're not an alpha? Is that right? I don't know, man. You got a lot of tattoos and a beard, so just saying. It's after March, so I just have sideburns. But as I think we're about to find out, no one is an alpha. But no, despite being a gravely voiced bodybuilder, this is not a term I have ever identified

with. That's so Sigma, bro. Yeah, if we have to categorize it, sure, I'm a Sigma. I think before we get into this, it's important to note. Categories can be great to the extent that they increase understanding. The problem begins when categories are used as a substitute for understanding. And we're going to encounter a lot of that today. Yeah, that makes sense.

So for anyone who has mercifully missed out on the entire Alpha, Beta, Sigma, whatever, discourse, can you run it down a little bit? The idea is that they're alphas who are the leaders and betas who are the followers. Everyone is in one of these two categories. Alphas get 90% of everything good in life and betas are left with the crumbs. So to circle back to the Sigma thing, there's a slightly more nuanced slash ridiculous version of this, right? Yeah, a Manosphere blog back in the day called Alpha Game Plan had a whole elaborate set of categories that recognized at the very least, that it's not quite that simple. To be clear, this is total bro science, not actual science, but we're going to humor it

because, well, that's what we're debunking here on this episode of Skeptical Sunday. I trust bro science more than actual science. Okay, well, fine. Trust the bro science. It really adds to your credibility here, but keep going. Well, the thing about this other more nuanced scale is, yeah, it adds more nuance. So betas in this framework are also confident and good-looking guys. They're just to a lesser degree than the alphas.

Deltas are the normal average everyday guy. Gammas are weird in like an off-putting way. Sigmas are weird in an attractive way and basically ignore or flout all social rules. All right. So is that us? Sigma's right? Yeah. That sounds good to me.

I feel like you're lying to yourself, man. I feel like you're a total alpha on this spectrum. Well, continue. There's like a whole thing now where younger guys want to identify as Sigma. Who doesn't want to be the cool, mysterious outsider or maverick who just kind of floats above all these social dominance games? Like, who doesn't want to be Han Solo? I see. Yeah.

But back to our more nuanced spectrum, the omegas in this version are like completely hopeless. And Lambda's just don't care because they're gay, I think is like the implication in this hierarchy. This fake pretend blog hierarchy. Sure, sure. I'm not endorsing this by any means at all. I'm just explaining it. I get why people use this because, for example, I've said many times on the show I was an exchange student. And when I was an exchange student in Germany, you're outside of the structure of it all.

One, you're new, but two, you're like such an alien presence in this place. You know, I was in a former communist country. So I show up and I remember the kids were like, dude, you're wearing sandals. That's like so lame and dumb. And it was like, it doesn't matter because Tevas are cool in 1997 where I'm from. So I'm rocking these things. And I remember people just were like, oh. And then suddenly other people were starting to wear these sandals.

But it was also like, I don't have to be a good skier even though that was or a good footballer, even though that was what made cool kids at the school. I was friends with all those guys because I was the. only American that anybody had ever met and I could start to speak German. So like I had my own status hierarchy or I had like this weird asterisk place in the hierarchy, right? The status hierarchy where it was like, this guy's not an athlete, wears Lamo clothes, doesn't speak German that well, but his friends with all of the quote unquote cool and uncool kids from the three grades around him because he stands out in this way where everybody talks to him. And that's sort of sigma-ish,

I guess, right? But it's really hard to build that if you're just like a, normal dude in a high school somewhere, I think. I always tell people about my high school. Like, I went to a pretty large high school. And, like, we had multiple groups of weird kids. And my group of weird kids was, like, the alpha weirdos, the skateboarder, hardcore punk rock, kind of, like, guys, like, we were. And then, like, the Marilyn Manson kids were further down the totem pole and the heavy metal

kids were even further down the totem pole because, like, nothing. was less cool in 1996 than being into heavy metal. You know what, though? Like, this is nonsense science. It's not science, right? But there's something to be said for like, yeah, you're like the pro-punk rock kid that's not traditionally cool, but your brother works at a store where they can get beer and you can get beer for everyone.

And it's like, well, you're automatically elevated to a tier where nobody messes with you because when all the jocks and Stacey's or whatever they're called want to have a party on the weekend, you're the first phone call. You're the guy who can actually get the beer. So it's like, yeah, you're kind of weird. you wear these weird shirts and you got tattoos in ninth grade, but like, nobody really messes with you because you're the hookup. The second openly gay kid in my school's history that anyone was aware of, his sister's

boyfriend was the beer guy. Yeah. And as you can imagine, he didn't get a lot of stick for being gay. No, that's a funny, well, no pun intended. But here's the thing. Do you think the nuance, I'm going to get canceled? Some one of these jokes is inevitably going to get me canceled at some way. But do you think the nuance adds anything to the conversation?

because we just made a mess of that, but it's not scientific or anything. It's basically a weird overlay that the people kind of made up to go over normal social hierarchy, but it's not really, it almost kind of proves that it's not a thing, right? Oh yeah, you can apply these labels to anybody

in all these different ways. So like, it's not that useful. I think that the one that we just talked about, the more nuanced one does add some kind of like deeper insight. And I think that people can kind of like see like at your school there was whatever, like the high school quarterback and the captain of the basketball team or whatever. And then there was just like the rest of the guys who were jocks of whatever. Here's the thing, though, we're adults now and we have to use high school examples to apply all of this

because none of it works outside of this weird artificial scenario where you're in a school trapped with people of different kinds and you have to be there. Like it just doesn't work elsewhere, in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, I think that like you can use it as a way to kind of like, increase understanding or you can use it as a substitute for understanding. I think that there are social hierarchies in every situation. But that's the thing is that they're fluid.

They're fluid. You can be the alpha in one situation or whatever you want. It's a top dog. You know, you can be the top dog at work and you go home and, you know, your wife's the boss and your kids make fun of you. Too close to home. You're hitting too close to home right now, Nick. And then you go play racquetball and you're like kind of somewhere in the middle.

You know, it could change rather the day. Anyone who spent any kind of time in alternative subcultures or the art world knows that, for example, conventional attractiveness does not count for a lot. You're the alpha, Chad, chiseled chin, perfect haircut guy and you go to like a goth club. You're not probably going to be most girls' first pick. That's a fun example, actually. I remember when I was in my late 20s or mid-20s, I got in killer shape, but I moved to New York. And I remember being like, you'd go in one bar where they had a bunch of like kind of fratty-looking

people. And I was like the older guy that was still clean cut, but had a job as a lawyer. And it was like, oh, you got to meet Jordan. But then I'd go out with my friend who is a DJ. She was a DJ. She's quite alt and all. And I was one of the only white guys, but I was like an athletic-looking white guy for that period of my life and I couldn't have been less interesting to these people. They were just like, I was invisible to these people. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I wonder what it is. It must be,

they must not like white guys or whatever. And that was maybe sort of kind of part of it, but really like a white dude like you with tats and a beard or whatever would walk in and just own that place. They just thought I was boring as hell because I was very vanilla, really. I just was just so predictable. Oh, a white guy who works out. Where do we find one of those, right? Everywhere. Get out of This is an artsy, fartsy place where people are spinning records at 2 p.m. All these different scenarios make this even less scientific because it's actually just all of this stuff gets shook up. And to be clear here, we're just talking about men, right?

The idea seems to have permeated out of the manosphere and into a lot of corporate speak, dating advice for sure, and general discourse that really transcends gender. I mean, yes, you're talking about dudes here, but you could read something pretty similar to this on a LinkedIn. blog with different technical terminology and it would be there. Yeah. And so I think that the more nuanced version we talk about, first of all, I think it's at least fairer because it doesn't assume that like if you're not the grown up equivalent of the

quarterback of the football team, just a hopeless loser and you need to like learn all these stupid human tricks to like have any shot in life. But we could talk about the more nuanced version all day. But I do think that it immediately shows how silly it is to divide. people into hyper-competent, insanely charismatic leaders and just this mob of feckless followers who just have no hope. Right. I agree with that.

So what's the origin of the alpha-beta discourse? Because it has this kind of scientific or pseudoscientific anthropological quality to it. And I think that kind of disarmed some people when they first encounter it. So it's based on a study of wolves from the 1940s by a guy named Rudolph Shanker. I see. So not only is the concept not based on humans, it's not even based on non-human primates. It's based on basically wild dogs. This is actually interesting.

The dogs in the study were not even wild dogs. They were dogs in captivity. There's a red flag here off the bat because don't animals really change their behavior quite a bit when they're in captivity? I'm pretty sure that's one of the most obvious sort of problems with this. So when you're studying wolves and they're in a cage, it's going to be way different than a pack of wolves out in some, Siberian forest somewhere. Yeah, I mean, if you were actually going to study wolves, you would just follow wolves around. Yes.

At a distance so that they can't see you. Yes. Yes, exactly. Because they were going to act differently because they see a human around. But it gets worse. These wolves weren't related to each other. So in the wild, wolves that impact, everybody knows a wolf pack. Wolfpack's just a family of wolves.

They're not like random wolves that you pick up. They're genetically tied to one another and biologically tied to one another. And the study looked at wolves that were just randomly thrown together. This guy's studying the Truman Show version of wolves. Yeah, yeah, this is a particularly good analogy because the wolves are also confined to a small area that's like 10 by 20 meters, which is 30 to 60 feet for people in a country that has back-to-back world championship belts. Okay, World War champions. Yeah, that study sounds like it examined the wolf equivalent of a prison yard. So if we take that analogy to humans, prison yards maybe not a great model for a normal human society?

I mean, there's a lot of insight there, but maybe not something we want to model everything after. Yeah, I think you could get tons of insight into human behavior by studying a prison yard. Sure. But it's not going to give you the same insight that you would get from studying a bunch of families just doing normal stuff. This is not the normal way that human beings live. And this is not the normal way that wolves live. So Shanker separates the wolves into a lead wolf and a bitch wolf. That's his term, not mine.

Thank you for clearing that up because, yeah, so presumably the bitch is the lead wolf's mate. And this is a scientific term before people trip out on us. That's correct. So the lead wolf and the bitch wolf, which is, it actually gets a little funnier when you consider that the bitch wolf is one of the wolves on top. They maintain their position in the herd because it's not a pack. It's just a herd. They do this. They maintain their position by constant aggression towards other wolves designed to suppress them.

Shanker documented ritualized fighting and submission as the mechanisms by which this group of wolves socially regulated itself. When does the concept of Alpha come in and how is that different from Shanker's work? A biologist named L. David Mech published the bestselling book The Wolf in 1970. It was the origin point of the alpha ideology in mainstream discourse. Meck was not a blogger or crank printing pamphlets in his basement. This was science at the time. It was a bestseller. And in the book, Mech codifies a linear dominance hierarchy.

He argues that wolf packs are structured like a military. a unit. The alpha pair were the top male and female who won their status through physical contests and maintained it through dominance displays such as pinning other wolves, growling

or standing over them. And life in this framework is depicted as this constant low-level war for resources and mating rights. Which we see in the alpha-beta discourse. There's a man or woman at the top and the alpha needs to constantly be asserting dominant.

are they going to fall out of leadership of the pack and you can't ever rest you can't ever you got to have eyes in the back of your head all that yeah and the thing is mech eventually disavowed everything significant about the wolf in 1999 he wrote a paper called alpha status dominance and division of labor and wolf packs there's a link to it in the in the show notes if you want if you're into reading scientific papers he completely rejects this idea that wolves are in charge because they won a wolf wrestling match. They're not the toughest wolves necessarily, or at least that's not why they're in charge. It sounds like the alpha wolf pair are literally just the parents. Yes, that is exactly right. The other wolves defer to them because they're older and they provide food and because they're the parents.

So if they're not constantly asserting dominance, how do the junior wolves move up in rank or do they? They do when they move out of the house. Okay, so the parent wolves are training them for the day, that they go out on their own, and when they do, they become, what, leaders of their own packs? Is that how it works? That's basically it.

A lot of the submission behaviors weren't, like, rolling over and displaying weakness. They're food-begging behaviors. So wolves viewed the parent how your dog views you. They lick you because they want food, because you have it, and they want some. If your self-improvement plan involves ditching your friends, suppressing your emotions,

and buying a bunch of e-books from a guy named Alpha King, buddy, you're not evolving. You're getting scammed. Speaking of scams, let's hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Zennie. What makes Zennie so great is that glasses don't have to be an expensive once every few years purchase. There are so many affordable options you can choose something practical, something fun, or just both.

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Try zero for free for one month at zero.com. Terms apply. That's zero with an X at zero.com. The 91% claim is based on a 2024-Zero survey conducted in the U.S. UK and Australia. networking course at six minute networking.com, newsletter at Jordan Harbinger.com slash news. Now, back to the show. So if Meck, if he then disavows everything he wrote in The Wolf, why are people still clinging to the ideas expressed in it?

Because once from 1970 and then in 1999, much more recently, he's like, that was all nonsense. It's like you have to deliberately skip over that to cling to his old ideas. Well, the book had a very big social footprint. It got adopted by Cesar Milo. in the world of dog training, as well as the manosphere types. And the correction comes almost 30 years later.

By then, there's a lot of cultural weight to undo. That's true. I feel like it's also just, frankly, a lot sexier to portray the leader of the pack as a dictator who fought his way to the top and maintains dominance through constant conflict. It's just a lot more attention grabbing than like, well, he's their dad. So how does Mech's work begin to trickle down into mainstream discourse? Like, how do we end up with influencers using this crap? I wouldn't totally discount Cesar Milan and dog training.

Oh, right. It doesn't explain everything, but it's there. But for our purposes, it kind of enters the discourse through the Manosphere wing of the internet. Okay, which for those who don't know, I probably should have defined this earlier, but the Manosphere started as this very heterogeneous group of bloggers focused on men's issues, ranging from, I don't know, family court stuff to general self-improvement, to fitness, to dating. Now, it's basically a place for men to talk about how much they hate women, kind of, right? Isn't that, is that fair? Yeah.

Oh, that's totally fair. Where we see the alpha beta discourse enter the manosphere is through the dating sector of it. And this is the pickup artist subculture, which, you know, was one part of the manosphere. And it just took this wolf prison yard study and just ran with it. Not just ran with it, but they assume all this applies to the average big city nightclub, which is weird. Yeah, they say that women are genetically hardwired to gravitate toward alpha traits, which they define in the narrowest terms possible. Height, good looks, money, acting like a total dick to everyone for no reason. Yeah, negging, giving backhanded compliments on purpose that's designed to make someone feel small.

Yeah, and by the way, guys, wolves do not do that. They do not do that. Yeah, wolves are not nagging. When the whole act like an alpha thing dropped, guys thought this was some kind of cheat coat when it came to picking up women. There's also this whole framing around this that it was like, you know, red pill. You accept this harsh truth and you escape the matrix

and now the world is your oyster, or you stay a beta and you just go along with what society wants you to do. And it's like dot, dot, dot, we end up with Dan Bilsarian telling people how to date, which is insane. Yeah, it is insane. And boy, do I know some fun things. about that guy, as you know, that I can't say it. I know publicly.

Yeah, exactly. You know, yeah, it's not even, it's not, they don't even apply it to like the world. It's just girls at the club. And, you know, that was kind of initially where it sat was setting these, these sites super low was like picking up women for the sake of taking them home and having sex with them. But as anyone who's actually, you know, done this can tell you it gets old quick. Yeah, sure does. Or so I've been told.

Jordan knows nothing. about this topic. Right, right, right, exactly. If that gets old so quick and is not good for you and no surprise, guys who ended up really sticking with a lot of the pickup stuff and didn't kind of graduate from it are a mess. Anyway, it doesn't stay there or else we wouldn't be talking about it, right? This stuff bleeds out into YouTube podcast bro stuff and generalize self-help all over the place. Well, yeah, what's sadder than a 45-year-old man at the club? Yeah, geez. I can't, I'm tired thinking of just even getting dressed to go to a place like that.

It's loud and there's lots of people. Yeah. It's like way past my bedtime before anything even pops off at a place like that. I'm in bed by like nine, dude. Amen, man. I used to think that was pathetic. Now I'm like, the real cheat code is going to bed before 9 p.m. Yeah.

It's pathetic. Yeah, it doesn't stay confined to the manosphere and it doesn't stay totally gendered either. There's this hustle culture. you know, girl boss thing, all these kinds of corporate expressions of culture. I call them LinkedIn Americans. They pick up this alpha beta dynamic. And from their perspective, it makes sense. Like there's a certain type of person in the corporate world who doesn't think that the key to success is innovation or intelligence or people skills or business smarts.

It's just be vicious and doing everything you can to keep others underfoot. Jeez, that's a pretty extreme take on it. You're not denying that Drive has something to do a success in the business world, though, right? It's just all the other baggage that goes along with it. Sure, yeah, Drive is, I'm sure Drive has a lot to do with it. But the act like an alpha thing isn't how strong, confident people act. It's this weird caricature of how they act formulated by people who are, in my estimation, deeply insecure. they think that the golden ticket in business or your social life or whatever is dominance.

It's not. It's competence. It's being good. And much like, you know, the actual wild wolves that were studied, people will follow you. If you demonstrate that you're a competent person and that hitching your ship to their star is going to take them places. I'd imagine there's a lot of turnover at play. places where the only thing the boss has to offer is acting like the villain from the devil wears Prada. The other thing to note is that in the business world, everything is done by a team,

basically. The guy at the top could be compared to the conductor making all the parts work together, but the conductor needs the orchestra to get anything done. I couldn't produce this podcast alone, for example. I don't have the writing and the research skills and the show editing skills that other people do. And on Feedback Friday, those questions, they require a thoughtful, compassionate answer, two qualities I've basically only read about in magazine. So I need Gabriel to help me out with that stuff. So how does the dynamic change when it moves into the corporate world and when it loses its gendered nature? How does this all leak into that stuff? Even in the version of alpha beta outside of the manosphere, for men at least, there's a big narrative about how men are

feminized and this needs to be undone. You know, you're too nice. Nice guys finish last. And you're too nice because the world is giving men a raw deal because they're men. And the men are supposed to deal with this using frame control. All right. So we know what frame control means, but basically nobody listening to this does. Frame control comes out of pickup artist culture, but it's one of the parts that fits very neatly into hustle culture, startup culture, corporate culture. So yeah, grind culture generally, cultures that share the same kind of dog eat dog framework. The idea is that all social interactions involve a frame, which I guess you could just say is like a framework or a set of terms or established power dynamic. In the male version of alpha, these supposedly alpha set of

behaviors, you maintain frame by always being stoic, refusing to ever get emotional. If someone introduces a competing frame, again, I'm going with the logic of this terminology and this ideology. I don't actually believe it. I'm just going with it. So if somebody introduces a competing frame, you have a number of ways to respond, one of which is ridiculing the person. So if somebody is being overly emotional at work, even if they have every right to be, you can say something like, well, wow, somebody didn't have their coffee yet. I got to get out of here. I think I'm going to lose it. Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays. Right. It's childish, as is all of this, because it reduces social interactions

to this bizarre dick measuring contest rather than good faith efforts at communication. But this comes from guys who think that if you cry in front of your wife when your mother dies, that you've just ruined your marriage. Right. Yes. It's incredibly juvenile and stupid and just lacks all sort of understanding

of how relationships actually work. So what's the female version of this? Because I'm very familiar with the male version. I think people kind of get it. It doesn't surprise me that there's a female analog, but I know absolutely nothing about it because that's not really a world I was ever part of. Sure. So for dating, you've got Shera, Airfan, and the website Female Dating Strategy,

which is all this is kind of about finding high value men is what they call it. That doesn't mean they're good men. It just means they're rich. I see. For the more corporate side of things, there's Liza Jabrylova, Cody Sanchez, Tonya, and Nikita Malik. I did not look a ton into these. I'm friends with Cody.

I don't know all of her work, but she's not like, if you don't beat up your co-worker. Like, she just tells you how to run a laundromat and make money. Sure, sure. And so if I'm like, you know, it's not the topic of the show.

The topic of the show is not the female side of things. But we do, I did want to kind of address like the ways in which this maybe is trickled down and permeated into other areas. So like, you know, I don't know, go to the comments and tell me what a, what a dick I am. for calling these people

Femosphere pickup artists or whatever. Okay, Cody's gonna kill me. But, all right. So it's sort of weird because the women are sometimes told that they have to like out alpha men to survive in the allegedly patriarchal world. And it goes beyond leadership

into this kind of idea of total perfectionism. Isn't the men's version doing that as well, though? Oh, yeah. I think that's totally fair. For the men, you have to be optimized, at work, you got to have your little drop-shipping side hustle or startup and you get to hit the gym until you have the physique of a Greek statue and picking up a new woman at the bar every night or being the world's most dominant husband and father. For women, it's kind of the same.

You'll be a CEO, fitness model after work, high value partner by night. You're supposed to be highly assertive and have girl boss energy and look perfect and reject vulnerability and be untouchable. That sounds exhausting. But yeah, honestly, it sounds like the male and female version of the alpha. They're not really that different. But I can see how they manifest in subtly different ways. Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think the key difference is that alpha men frame other men as the enemy or at least as competition,

like every other man is competition at the very least. And women are an obstacle or a resource. And I think, again, from what I understand, it was not the topic that we addressed, but I did want to kind of touch on it. the alpha woman thing more frames like everyone as an enemy because for them it's like you're competing against men and women. So you've got to do kind of like double duty and the men are frames as like high value partners in crime more than just objects of acquisition. So I think that there's like again there seems to be subtle differences to it. But it does seem like it leans on

different aspects of insecurity, people's insecurity. right? So for men, they're selling power and a sense of significance. And for women, it seems like they're selling autonomy, kind of, you know, the standalone woman who doesn't just not need a man, she doesn't need anybody. You don't need friends. You don't need a man and you don't need friends and you don't need, you know, you got your hashtag girl boss, you're running your own thing. And it's, I don't know, the whole thing sounds like a recipe for loneliness for men and women. Yeah, with men, it's almost like they want you to think of yourself as the protagonist of entourage or something.

Yes, exactly. Like you just got all these awesome cool dudes, but they're not as cool as you. And you guys just own every, you know, mug everything everywhere you go. I think that it's pretty gross in general to view all human interactions as transactional. And it's not just gross. It's like it's sad. I genuinely feel bad for people who who feel that, well, this is just what life is and you have to get used to it. It's not.

And if you view people in this framework, you can't really ever have a peer. Right, because that's a threat. Yeah, they're a threat. Yeah. You never get to rest. Everyone is competition or they're a resource that you need to acquire. And I think that this mindset could really lead to having adversarial relationships with your intimate partner, your romantic partner, your friends, your coworkers. Again, it sounds exhausting.

The whole thing sounds so exact. exhausting. Yeah, it does. Again, for the record, we're really just focusing on guys. I did just want to touch on the women. I did not do a deep dive into the research on it. So if I, if I unfairly maligned any of these people as anything, you know, I apologize. I was kind of just like, I think it's probably fine. I mean, the business instructive stuff, it does have notes of this, whether it's intentional or not. But the guy's stuff explicitly plays on you're going to die alone. with no friends and no girl if you don't get a Dan Bilzerian haircut

and start doing steroids or whatever. Right? So for the guys, it's particularly damaging. Yeah, and it's like, it's such a weird thing too because it assumes that like, like, I don't want to be Dan Blasarian.

You know what I mean? No kidding. I don't like, I don't want my life to be like that. No. You're 40 years old and it's like, I don't know that he does this anymore because it's been at least 10 years

since I've looked at anything that that man does other than whining about Jews. which is kind of his. Yes, his new thing. His new way to get attention is he's an anti-Semitic, Jew-hitting guy who's like, I don't know, still shooting machine guns on Instagram videos.

It's pathetic, really. But it's like, I don't want to be on a yacht with 16 women 20 years younger than me. I like my wife and my little house and spent a time with my kid. Like, I don't want this life. And I think that there's a certain type of guy who doesn't want it either.

But he's like, oh, man, I'm such a loser because, like, I'm content living family life. You know, I'm going to leave my wife and go off and chase after this dream of being a millionaire drop shipper or like whatever. And it's just like, maybe it's cope on my part. But like I just, I don't. No, we're tired. That seems exhausting to me. It is exhausting.

And also for the only guys who really fell into that were the guys that didn't realize he was just paying for that to happen. I mean, he was hiring the models to be there. Yeah. He wasn't attracting them with his alpha maleism. You know, you have to be a special kind of student. slash 11 years old to fall for that kind of schick. And so, yeah, I mean, it's quite sad. And it's not like he even made his own money.

His dad did something to get a bunch of that money, and then he went to prison for that, right? And so it's like this guy, the whole thing, everything about him is a caricature and a joke. But yeah, you really have to be like a kid to fall into this stuff most of the time. So let's say I see this stuff and I decide, I'm a beta, and I decide I want to make changes.

I want to become an alpha. What am I going to start doing according to the people who think that this is an important shift to make? There's like four basic components. The first is body language. You need to be like expansive as possible. You can't ever cross your legs. Don't they,

they call that like penis shame or something? There's a term for this. Yes, it's penis shame. And like this is like clue what, how weird this is. Yes. That there's some like subliminal signal that you're sending to the world based on your deep suburb.

subconscious if you cross your legs like you're ashamed of having a penis and it's like oh dude maybe you're just a little more comfortable sitting that way like that's totally fine go home Freud you're drunk yeah yeah it's absolutely bizarre so then they're going to teach you about eye contact dominance which according to alpha coaches like if you look away that's a sign of submission so you have to like stare at people like a serial killer because you're terrified of losing this secret staring contest that only you are participating in because nobody else is doing this you have to speak slowly i guess i fail there as a hypercaffeinated rhode islander i'm always going to fail the speaking slowly test and you have to speak from your chest you can't ever use upspeak yeah upspeak is the

that's for girls or something that's the idea right is that is where everything sounds like a question yeah like that ballet girl kind of thing everything sounds like a question yeah so the communication stuff is where it starts getting really toxic. Disagreement is not a place to find common ground. You don't argue, you don't negotiate, you don't try and convince people, you just assert your side and that's it. We talked about negging, which is these like backhanded compliments that are supposedly going to have everyone groveling for your approval, which no, it's not.

You're also encouraged to constantly interrupt people and talk over them. Yes. So this is all terrible. advice for social interaction, for anybody who needs to be told that. And people who do this, they find themselves at the bottom of the food chain, once again, the social hierarchy, and they probably can't figure out why. So it causes, the damage this does is it causes them to do this more, right? Because they go like, oh, all these people don't seem to want to be around me and they're cutting me. I need to talk over them more. I need to neg them more. I need to be a contrarian more often about every little

thing because this isn't working. I need to do it harder. And it's like eventually you just go, gosh, this person's so annoying. I don't even want to be around them anymore. I'm done giving them a chance. And so yeah, if you're doing any of this, just knock it off. Everyone hates you. And they're just, they haven't told you yet. It's because you're, they're just jealous of your alpha load wolf status. Right, exactly. She's. Your coach to have the same facial expression, whether you're like winning the lottery or just found out somebody died. It's called being unreactive. Yes, it's emotional constipation, really. You're supposed to be completely out of touch with your feelings and emotions. Like many aspects of this, it's based on an idiot's understanding

of what stoicism was. Right. You just, you know, you become a wall. Walls are indeed famous for their ability to form meaningful and enriching relationships. So, yeah, I can see why. Yeah. Great model. Yeah. Finally, you have to curate an alpha mindset, which mostly means ditching your old friends who are keeping you down. And you also have to buy a lot of books from alpha influencers. Is that a convenient behavior. Yes. Books and courses.

Yes. Your hobbies should only be posting inspirational quotes with pictures of wolves or the Joker or what, I don't know. Guns and explosions, yeah. Skulls. On social media, you know, you get in and going to the gym and building your drop shipping side hustle. I don't think they drop ship anymore, but maybe a date.

I'm just going to explain the joke. the reference here. So drop shipping, this is like where you pick a product and you sell it on Amazon. I don't think the side hustle essentially exists anymore, but all of these sort of internet hucksters like Ty Lopez and all that, you know, here in my garage, like that guy, you'd get some self-help book and it would be like dot, dot, dot, you need to be rich. And by the way, here's how you do it. It was like four X trading. Side hustles would be like four X trading, drop shipping where you're selling a product, something along those lines. Crypto became, drop shipping kind of went out when crypto came up because then it was like, I'll teach you how to pick crypto and day trade crypto or

whatever. And what's funny is you can actually do that, but none of those guys actually have a clue how that's done. You actually did or do some of that day trading stuff, but none of it, I assume you've learned none of it from Ty Lopez or whatever. No, I learned it from like old men who traded stocks in the 80s. Yes. And it's stuff that like only works in crypto because, you know, market caps are much smaller. The liquidity is much lower. And I'm trading against a bunch of other morons who learned how to trade out of books written in the 80s. Or you're trading against people who don't know what they're doing because they're learning from somebody on Instagram. So they're just getting their asses handed to them. The best guys are like one,

two steps above me. They're not like, I have a finance degree, master's in finance from Yale. So the talent pool is limited. You're competing against 20-somethings who are throwing their away, which is a good market to be in if you want to take candy from some babies. If your self-improvement plan involves ditching your friends, suppressing your emotions, and buying a bunch of e-books from a guy named Alpha King 69, buddy, you're not evolving. You're getting scammed. Speaking of scams, let's hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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Now, back to the show. The actual impact of all this stuff is likely to be that your coworkers think you're difficult to work with. your friends think you're a jerk who's changed in bad ways only, and the only people who are going to date you are going to be traumatized or super insecure or just don't know you well enough yet. Yeah, there's also like the internal experience of being this guy. Like, you just, you have to be hypervigilant and constantly scan every room to see if you're losing status. This is the exact opposite of confidence.

It's just this prison of social anxiety that people think is some measure of strength. So I very unfortunately got wrapped up in this for a few years, not the whole alpha stuff, because we weren't even using those terms back in 2008 or whatever when I sort of got interested in all this like dating and confidence and body language stuff. But you're right. You get hypervigilant, right? So every time you're in a group of people, you're like, oh, I don't want to be seen talking to other guys because then it looks like I'm hiding.

And then you're like, oh, I'm nervous about how I look because I've been talking to my friends. I need to only talk to girls. And it's like, oh, gosh, I'm not talking to a girl right now. Everyone's going to, I'm losing status every minute that I'm not doing that. I need to be loud, but I don't really want to be loud. I'm kind of enjoying this other person's story. No, I have to cut them off and tell one of my own that's better.

And then you're like, but that's kind of dushy. So you're constantly doing that. And it really has the opposite effect of looking confident because you're monitoring yourself and constantly in your head. So you're not present at all. You're basically acting like a weirdo and trying to engineer everything. And I remember going out on dates with girls and they'd be like, why are you only staring at the same place on my face? And I was like, oh, I'm trying an experiment where I'm only looking into your right eye because I've read on some stupid blog that like the right eye is where how you generate rapport with people.

And I just remember, like, I had cool friends that tolerated me and they were like, hey, man, why are you being weird now? And I'm like, I'm doing this thing. and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, even if that works, it's weirder than just being normal, so just try to be normal. And some of my female friends are like, you don't have to do any of that stuff. And I was like, oh, you're just saying that because we're friends. And they're like, no, no, no, it's actually hurting you.

Trust me. You trying to do this and, like, be loud. Like, it's none of it's congruent with who you actually are. And that's the problem. And I was like, yeah, but that's because who I actually am is not like this, you know, whatever you'd call it now, like alpha. And they're like, no, it's because you're pretending to be someone. and it's like the most obvious thing ever.

So I just stopped doing it. And I remember as soon as I was like, yeah, I kind of give up. This isn't working for me. That's when stuff started to fall into place. You know, I'd go somewhere and somebody would be like, yeah, man, you're not even six feet tall. And I'd be like, no, yeah, I don't care. And then it was like, they're like, what? And it was like, yeah, no, I'm 5'10.

That's a perfectly normal above average height. I don't really don't care. You think about your height all the time and then it would be like, that's when we're like, oh, you're like a normal secure person who's not a weirdo. Then I stood out because all. all the other 29 year old guys are being weirdos. Because everybody was into this crap for a minute, right? It was so weird.

So, yeah, it really has the opposite effect. The best thing to do is just to leave it all alone. Yeah, so I took the course at Jordan's old company that shall not be named. And my biggest takeaway from it was, like, learning how to get people to stop talking to me. I, like, hacked the system to reverse engineer it. if you're like one of the listeners out there who's heavily tattooed you know that when you're heavily tattooed the weirdest people on earth just desperately want to talk to you wherever you go and so i was like constantly fielding like just these bizarre people coming up to me out of nowhere and talking to me

my biggest takeaway from it was like oh i just start like slowly angling my body away from them and like giving terse short responses and then they'll just go away that was what i learned from my alpha boot camp. That's so Sigma of you. So I feel like most people just instantly reject the animal kingdom framing that's implicit in the alpha beta discourse. But why doesn't it hold water? I mean, we know that the wolf studied that initiated everything was based on kind of

manufactured situations, right? They were in captivity, yada, yada. But in what way do animal kingdom rules not apply to people? Well, animal kingdom rules do apply to people. People are animals. And we're primates. We're highly sophisticated primates, but we are primates nonetheless. So if you're going to start looking for parallels, you would look there.

You would look at bonobos or gorillas or, you know, something like that. But where you really see human sophistication, this is one of the things that makes us very, very different, is in our social organization. Right. Other primates have social organization. So do ants. but human beings have it on just a completely whole other level, obviously. Yeah, it's one of our evolutionary hacks. There's this old libertarian way of, like, teaching people how important commerce is.

And you think it's something like a pencil. They're so plentiful that you can just take one. Like pencils are free, basically. Essentially. But no one human being can build a pencil. You've got to get the materials. You need the equipment to process the raw materials. You need to manufacture, construct.

construct the actual pencil. I could go get a free pencil from the bank, break it in half, and they're going to give me another one. Like, they're just, it's like salt. They're just everywhere. But it requires this insanely complex social organization to make something as simple as a pencil. And just like ordering people to make pencils

is not the thing that gets pencils made. Yeah, and we throw that social organization at building cities or putting people on the moon, and it's quite incredible. Yeah, there's no. No insect colony has yet, they've yet to put anybody on the moon or any, any ants on the moon. Yeah. Other animals just don't have the level of sophistication that our social organization does. Like, this is not just a brain size issue. It goes back to the Stone Age.

Good luck hunting a mammoth all by yourself. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So this is all cool and interesting, but hey, how does this apply to the alpha beta dynamic that we're talking about? Human beings evolved for cooperation. It's not that we're not competitive at all. Clearly, human beings are competitive. We're both competitive and cooperative at the same time. But simple dominance is not enough to get much done. In fact, if you study human history, you will quickly see that the less kind of naked gross dominance we have, the greater our accomplishments become. Huh, really? I don't know. Is that the case? Yes, absolutely and demonstrably. The Egyptians never put any on the moon. There's the technological issue in play here, but like in the classical world,

technology doesn't advance very much because like, how do you get things done? You beat somebody until they do it. I see what you mean. That's it. That's how you get. I mean, we can talk about this on the, on the slavery episode for almost all of human history. How you get things done is you grab somebody and beat them until they do it. Right. Okay. And like, you take the technological advancements that you and I take very much for granted. And they've almost all happened over the last 300 years when we decided that trading was a better way of getting things done than just like beating somebody until they complied. But we still have leaders. We still have hierarchies. No, that's absolutely true. But leadership among humans is context dependent. We talked about this earlier

with the social hierarchy. Like you can be a leader in some situations and not in others. I'm not the head of marketing at my job, but I know a lot about the market we sell to. So people defer to my experience on that topic. That's context-dependent leadership. I think in a lot of companies, too, the title doesn't mean as much as what you're getting done or what you bring to the table. And that's just the workplace.

But it kind of undercuts the idea of an alpha needing to take and maintain control at all times. Yeah, a boss who can't step aside and let people do their job is a bad boss. Right. And when you transfer that from the world of business to the world of dating, some people probably find aggression and rude dominance attractive, sure, but they're probably not really the kind of partners most people would want to have long term. So is there any evolutionary reason that brutish dominance isn't to our advantage? Do we know anything about this? The main theory right now is that human beings self-domesticated. We domesticated ourselves because we have three things that give us a massive advantage.

Number one, massive brains come with massive cognitive power. Number two, we have endurance, physical endurance. Like cheetahs can run really fast for like 30 seconds. To the best of my knowledge, there is not another species that can run a marathon. And if there is, they are not the norm. They are also a massive outlier. You know, cheetahs don't run for 26 miles. Third, we have just next level of amounts of social cohesion.

So you just cannot get that if some guy is constantly flipping out and challenging people to a fight every time someone challenges his dominance. So the theory is that we bred this aggression out of ourselves. Yeah, I've actually heard about this. I think on this show, the theory is that we got together in bands. And if there were aggressive, violent people, they basically got murdered, right, so that they wouldn't mess with the success of the tribe. Because if you've got somebody who's like, oh, I didn't help hunt, but I'm going to go kill the guy who is coming back with the hunt and take it for myself.

It's like, no, no, no, we're going to kill you for doing that. Because now you're killing off the hunters and you're stealing from people. You're basically a net drain on the entire tribe. So yes, we needed violent people who were going to murder and hunt food and share it. But if you were going to murder and hunt food and not share it, well, you're dead weight. We're just going to kill you. So we kind of like took the people who couldn't behave or like who would fire off impulsively and hurt someone else. And now you've got to carry that guy to the next hunter-gatherer location because some idiot broke his leg.

Those people didn't last long. They were kind of bred out of society. And that's one theory. And it makes sense. but it also kind of says the opposite of what the whole Alpha Wolf theory says. It's basically the best cooperators are the ones that made it,

not the ones that were all rogue and Maverick and did things on their own. Those people were mercilessly cold. Yeah, no, it says a lot. I mean, there's a period in British history that's called the Bloody Code era in 18th century and early 19th century, England,

and there's like 220 crimes that carry the death. penalty, stealing sheep, pickpocketing, cutting down a young tree, being in the company of gypsies for more than a month. There's like all these things that they'll just put you to death for. And after 200 years of killing people for minor transgressions, England becomes a very polite place, possibly because all of the rabble rousers, dare I say alpha wolves, were prevented from breeding. Dang. Yeah. So it's a small and limited example.

of how you could breed aggression out of human beings. Interesting. Yeah, but I've also heard of, there's a theory called survival of the friendliest, which I kind of touched on this earlier, but it's the idea that humans are obligate cooperators in the same sense that other species are obligate carnivores, right? Your cat can't be vegan.

No matter how much you want it to be, it cannot. You can't live without cooperating with other people. Like your example about the pencil, there's like the homesteaders and stuff, right? But it's like, when it comes down to it, you're still, well, that's interesting. You've got solar panels. Did you make those?

You know, it's like, no, right. Yeah, no. I mean, your cat can be vegan, but not for very long. Right, just for a few days. Yeah, a few days only. No, I mean, the whole sort of thing, like, the point is it to beat up on them, like, cool. It's a cool thing, but I don't think anybody but the most insane of them would think that they're completely self-sufficient and never needed anything from outside.

I mean, they have a hot water heater in there somewhere, probably. They have roads that deliver goods. Right. Yes. You know, have an international supply chain. Yes. Are there people who can live completely alone without help from other people? Sure. I think most of them can only do this in a parasitic way by being predatory upon people who are being cooperative, which I'm not applying the homesteaders. But yes, I can go live out on my own and steal from people who are actually connected to the social fabric, I guess. the vast overwhelming majority of human beings cannot survive in a war of all against all and without

cooperation. Nothing says, I'm secure and thriving, like constantly scanning the room to make sure nobody outranks you in an imaginary wolf prison yard. That's not confidence. That's anxiety with slightly better branding. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Noble. I travel a lot.

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Whether you're searching for a specific guest, a topic you're into, or an episode you want to revisit. You can also personalize your listening experience by creating playlists without downloading the episodes. Organize your subscriptions, save episodes for later. Best of all, it's completely free and ad-free, which makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. Download CastBox today, subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show, of course, and leave us a comment while you're there. Join us over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit if you want to argue about this with strangers on the internet who may or may not be robots until you're blue in the face. That's the Jordan Harbinger Subreddit. Now, back to the show. When I ran the dating company,

we definitely leaned more into being friendly and personable than we did on being a jerk and telling guys, you know, women are going to be attracted to you if you're a jerk. Like that, that was just only true and limited circumstances and you didn't get the kind of women that you wanted. Yeah, there's a social cost to being a jerk. Yes. Again, to go back to this like hunter-gatherer society thing, which for whatever reason people take to be man's natural state, which that's whatever that means. Whether or not that's for the whole other episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Does natural state mean anything, etc. An alpha who hoards all the food is not an asset. He is a liability. And if he then rubs people's noses in the fact that he's got all the food to show dominance, he is not going

to survive for very long because people will kill him. We actually have a really good example of this from recent human history about just how bad incompetently asserting dominance can be. During the Vietnam War, there was a practice called fragging. I think I remember this from the movie Platoon. Yeah. Basically, if your squad leader was a dick, you'd kill him with a grenade. Is that a real thing or is that something just from Vietnam movies? Oh, it's very real.

In fact, as many as a thousand American military commanders were targeted for fragging by their own soldiers between 1969 and 1972 alone. There were at least 86 deaths over 700. injuries. The number is actually probably a lot higher because you didn't have to chuck a grenade under his bunk. You could just be like, oh, Lieutenant, I need you to go look over there. And over there is like where Viet Cong snipers have been clapping people. Or go over there and we shoot you from far away and blame it on the Viet Cong. You know, like it's not difficult to kill somebody on your own side in a time of war if you want to get rid of them. And grunts would do this to their

They're commanding officers. It's like, we don't get rid of this guy. He's going to get us all killed. You know, it's not just that he's, he's rubbing people the wrong way. He's a direct threat to the survival of these men. And you can kind of like extrapolate how this would play out in a number of scenarios. People who constantly assert dominance are bad news. People are less likely to help them out because they don't like them.

Which is a big deal if you're an obligate co-op. It's a big deal if you, you know, which take it out of war. It's like if you work in an office. I'm just not going to help you because you're kind of a jerk. So this is a good pivot to the notion of reverse dominance hierarchy. There are societies, existing human societies, such as the, and I'm going to do my level best to pronounce this correctly, Kong San and the Inuit, where if one person gets too big for their britches, they will take him down a peg.

because he's gotten too powerful. They're not chucking hand or grenades at the guy. They're just ridiculing him, shaming him, ostracizing him. But for many periods of human history, having a sort of domineering alpha mindset could be a death sentence. To tie the reverse dominance idea

back to the theory of hunter-gatherers, ostracism, that was a super big deal in these societies where resources were limited, right? So if you're eating last because no one likes you, or you can't sleep in the cold, you're sleeping out in the cold, that's not a good situation to be in.

Right. There's also the concept of dominance versus prestige. This is a concept taken from the work of Joseph Henrik. Prestige is a lot more accurate way of describing how humans get to the top in the modern world than anything we have from the animal kingdom. So take the Alpha Wolf model where fear and intimidation are used to take status and force followers to submit. That just makes people want to avoid leaders wherever possible. Like if you have some super short-tempered boss, you're going to run. whenever they're around. And if you make a mistake, you're going to hide it until it becomes a bigger

issue because you don't want to deal with that person. Compare the concept of dominance and leadership with the idea of prestige. Leadership is established on the basis of merit, shared knowledge. The status is granted by others to the leader freely because of his merit. Followers mimic his behavior because the leader mostly leads by example and people want to be near the leader so that they can pick up on his merit. Yeah, they want mentorship time. They're not ducking under their desk every time that the leader walks through. Yeah, and like super briefly, there's a concept in parenting of like authoritative parenting versus authoritarian parenting.

And authoritarian parenting is like constantly bossing your kids around. There's all these draconian rules with severe consequences. And authoritative is just like there's rules, there's expectations, there's consequences for failing to follow rules or live up to. expectations, but the parent is guiding the child and leading by example and showing the child how to behave. And it's the difference between a child who like cowers and fears their parent and a child who admires their parent and looks up to them and doesn't want to disappoint them. Which child do you think is going to grow up to be, forget, well behaved, better adjusted? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I do see that difference in parents. One thing I think that's a big takeaway is that the alpha people are confusing or maybe even conflating prestige and dominance. Like they think good posture and talking over people is going to earn them prestige when in reality people recognize unearned dominance, if you will, pretty quickly. I mean, it's very fleeting. And you know, there's totally situations where like a guy just needs to come in, bark orders, and people just need to do what he says. These are crises and emergencies, right? Like if your house is burning down and you will accept the leadership, you know, like if your house is burning down and a firefighter comes in and yells at you to get out of the house, you are going to immediately do what he says. But this is so situational.

And this is not how human societies elevate their leaders, especially not in the modern world. No, if that same guy yells at me to get out of his way in line at Starbucks, I'm just going to ignore him and possibly have them call the police. if he keeps going, right? It's situational. It's situational. Exactly. No, that makes perfect sense. I think even if we go back in time,

the person with the most leadership qualities is going to be the one with the highest social intelligence a lot of the time. Because in caveman times, two guys getting into a fight. Again, as we spoke about before, this is a huge liability, right? Now you've got to take care of injured people. Like, no, thank you.

Yeah. So this is especially true in Ice Age cultures during the population bottleneck. This is in Northern Europe. during the last glacial maximum, which is exactly what it sounds like. Okay. So, yeah, if your tribe is 17 guys

and two of them can't go hunting the next day because they're all banged up, it's just a massive liability. It's the difference between catching the mammoth and not catching the mammoth. So the guy who prevents two of them from getting into a fight and helps them work together again

as the one who naturally rises to the top as the leader. You see this in the military too. Generals are not just the, and top officers, they're not just the toughest guys, right? in the military. That's not how any of this works. Nope. Toughest guys top out about Colonel. Yeah, that makes sense.

There's elite training schools that you go into. But my understanding, somebody who's never been in the military, that some of these you go into, and it's like Lieutenant Colonel, that's your ceiling. It's not like who can withstand the most pain and deal out the most death. That is not who gets leadership. It's who's good at getting people to cooperate. In human evolution, the leader is often, even in ancient history and prehistoric times, is often the person with the best social intelligence who can manage people.

In its best form, leadership is a form of service. Alpha managers are super toxic, not just for the people who deal with them, but for the whole organization, because they're using dominance tactics in a prestige and competence world. So a super specific example, there are a lot of historians who argue that D-Day was such a disaster for the Germans because nobody wanted to wake Hitler up in the middle of the night and tell him that the Allied forces were landing in Normandy. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's what you get when you rely only on dominance.

Make it smaller. There's a little IT problem at work. You don't want to tell your boss about it, but it's going to be a gigantic one. If you leave it for 48 hours, you're not going to get blamed for not telling him, so who cares? You don't have to work in two days. It's somebody else's problem, man, right?

Yeah, somebody else's problem, and you're not going to hear about it, you know your boss is going to have a meltdown if you tell them there's a problem. You don't want to be the guy who gets shot by the messenger. You don't want to be the messenger who gets shot by the alpha boss. And if you flip it around, the manager who's easy to talk to

and is more interested in problem solving than assigning blame and looking like the tough guy, he's going to know about small problems before they become big ones and therefore the whole organization becomes more successful. Yeah, and these are like all theoretical, but people can apply these to like,

everybody's seen something like this. For sure. Work or in their family life or whatever. In turn, what all of this means is that prestige-oriented groups, to get back to this constant prestige versus dominance, prestige-oriented groups are generally going to out-compete dominance-oriented ones. You know, a little bit of evolutionary psychology is a very dangerous thing. A bunch of stuff is hard-coded into our brains for millions of years of evolution, but

the human experience is just not as simplistic as you. You have to club a guy over the head before he clubs you, and that's how you get to be king. Yeah. And that's really it, man, I think. Human beings are animals, but we're animals who are so very different from other animals. There's no science backing up any of the alpha stuff, quite the opposite. Anthropology, social biology, and evolutionary psychology mostly tell us that the whole alpha structure is just a dead end.

It's a seductive story because it promises us that the world is simple. It's the simple-tiered pyramid where you can just hack your way to the top. But as we've seen, that pyramid is built on a foundation of both bad biology and mostly deep-seated insecurity. The bottom line is that when you see somebody who's obsessed with alpha status, you are not looking at a leader. You're looking at somebody who is fundamentally afraid of the messiness of real human connection. Humans didn't conquer the planet by being bullies. We did it by being the most sophisticated collaborators in history. So if we were bullies, we did it together.

If somebody's trying to sell you an alpha mindset, they're usually betting on your own status anxiety to make a buck. Thanks again to Nick Pell for helping us separate the apex predators from the internet pretenders. And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. Actually, send it to Alpha Mail at Jordan Harbinger.com. It'll still reach me, obviously. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created an association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Tadasidlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And I might be a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, of course, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's been fact-checked. So consult a qualified professional before applying anything like Dan Billsarion,

before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about, your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. What if we're not just close to building matrix-level simulations? We may already be inside one. You're about to hear a preview of our episode with Rezwan Verk on clues we're living in a rendered world. The simulation hypothesis is basically the idea that what we think of is the physical world, you know, like this table, this

chair, that all the physical reality is actually part of a virtual world. The simulation hypothesis, the subtitle is an MIT computer scientist shows why AI, quantum physics, and Eastern mystics agree we're in a video game. There have been a number of physicists who aren't looking at the world as information now. So there's a whole branch of physics called digital physics. Instead of looking at things like conservation of energy and conservation of momentum, you're looking at conservation of information. Does information get created or get destroyed? And some have even said that the world itself is basically a quantum computer if you think about it. And so that would be, whatever computational substrate is being used around the simulation would have to be a lot more

advanced than what we think of as computers today. I use the metaphor of video games that the world is the type of massively multiplayer online video game because that's sort of my background was in building video games in Silicon Valley. Now there's a lot of different flavors of simulation theory when you kind of delve deep into it. And probably the most popular expression of that in the media has been the film The Matrix, because, you know, Neo thought he was in a real physical world, but it turns out he was actually in a virtual world.

But now AI is moving so fast that I think we'll get to that point much more quickly, and certainly within the next 50 years, 100 years at the max. For the full conversation that will make you question every assumption you've ever held, check out episode 1239 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Riswan Verk.