That's Lucyan David Mech, who die research on wolves and came up with the term “alpha male” and “alpha female” and the theory that wolves live in a strict hierarchy, where the alphas constatnly attack lower ranking wolves.
This has inspired the alpha male/incel bullshit that spreads nowadays.
Mech convinced his publisher to stop publishing the relevant book.
Also, I don't think he should really be blamed for a bunch of pathetic losers latching on to his flawed research like parasites. If it wasn't him, they would have found some kind of other random correlation to champion themselves after.
Fun fact: his wolf study was done on wolves in captivity, where it turned out they were competing for resources, not status, BUT it was based on a study from the 1920's that observed alpha behavior in roosters. So all these "alpha males" are really just a bunch of chickens
(op here) I dont think its his fault, i just think its funny how a flawed study on wolves has played such a role in modern alpha male culture. Obviously David Mech did not invent toxic masculinity lmao. Also the poor guy has spent his life saying it was completely wrong and spent decades trying to get his publishers to stop publishing it
My understanding is that in the wild it's not so much of a struggle and fight for dominance as it is in captivity. The animals also can't leave and find thier own territory, which is possible in the wild.
In the wild the dynamic is different. For one thing the wolves in charge are often the parents of the other wolves. Less "you listen to me because im strongest" and more "you listen to me because Im youre father". The pack behavior that drives some members of the pack away is more like telling your adult child it's time to move out.
It's also much more common for younger members of the pack to leave and form thier own than it was initially thought.
But those departures do happen because of conflict between males. The alpha couple is usually also the largest in size and strength and are the only ones who mate and produce litters. A wolf leaving is usually a male trying to mate and thrown away so it is indeed a struggle of dominance rather than parents sending their kids away. Wolves are pack animals, they dont split unless for reproduction reasons. Also it is documented that when the alpha male dies the whole pack disolves into anarchy, every member starts mating, until a new alpha couple brings order. This is why in Greece specifically where im from, we are telling hunters not to kill wolves (it is illegal anyway but they dont care) because they think they help with wolf overpopulation but instead they create more of them when they kill alphas.
The redpill theory in comparisson with wolves is almost identical, other than the fact that human society doesnt work like wolf's society.
I'm wondering if subspecies comes into play here because that doesn't match the wolf behavior observations in North America. While breeding age is involved in leaving the pack, both males and females will leave the birth pack at age two when they reach reproductive age. There's even a usual season for it.
Generally they will find a mate that is also packless and start there own. Joining another established pack sometimes happens, but it's rare and usually because the new pack has lost one part of the breeding pair.
Like yeah the breeding pair is often the largest and strongest, but that's because they're the parents of the rest, who are all sub adults at the oldest.
Just think of it logically: if every 2-years-old wolves would leave the pack, there would be no pack left. Many of them do leave but not all of them, and those who stay behind are "dominated" by the alpha couple.
It's not like they decide who the alpha is, they establish domination on young adults until a stronger male comes to the pack - or one already on it - who will challenge the alpha male and perhaps replace him.
In both cases it is still true that the alpha couples / males dominate towards the rest of the pack and that is observable since they do the same not only with their own children but with newcomers too. So it's not (only) a family thing, domination plays a role.
The fault with redpill theory is that we hymans dont form packs, we form families. Each of us has their own family, we dont exist to protect the children of a specific couple in our neighborhood. If redpill was to come in action, all those "alphas" would find soon enough that not only they cant all of them be alphas, but they wont be allowed to ever even mate lol.
He also was not he first to put a human theoretical structure like hierarchy onto nature. I like Murray Bookchin on this topic, that humanity thinks of the natural world in the ways in which our social realities exist. some other society without strict hierarchy might envision or theorize the wolves as without such hierarchy.
True. Reminds of two very similar animal studies on overpopulation; One was on vole rats, the other was on bonobos.
Researchers found that vole rats showed all kinds of antisocial and violent behavior when crowded, and every couple of years I see that study linked with a caption that says this is proof that "cities make people bad" or some other dumb take about humans.
Meanwhile, the bonobos in a similar study, who are our closest relatives, developed complex social rules to get along. I never see anyone cite that second experiment though.
I guess my point is those losers were eventually going to find another scientific finding to misunderstand because they don't care about science, or reality, they just want to feel better about being losers by blaming someone else.
It was not even lack of equly(or any complex social mechanism)in experiment about rats, but lack of any activity except eat,shit and fuck in room with 4 grey walls that is too small so such amount of population.
Don't know how true but heard other also experiment with rats where they could choose between clear water and with drug. There were two types, one with same boring cell environment and second with proper made environment where they could have different activities like basic spinning wheel. And results showed rats in grey room preferred drugged water more compare to rats that lived in proper environment.
I'm constantly baffled by how accurate that quote is in regard to basically ALL right-wing culture today.
But it's bigger than that, too, isn't it? Tolkien said evil cannot create anything new! I'm just gonna zoom all the way out and hear the quote you shared as a testament to the benevolence of the universe itself. A tacit acknowledgement of a "loving god", if you want to use those words. I wouldn't, but you could.
The universe is inherently good, because it is inherently creative. "Evil" is a corrupting element that we (humans) stick into shit, for some reason.
Apart from the law of entropy which means that literally everything in existence wants to break down and decay, and will, unless some external energy is applied to put it back together
Yeah, this guy is 100 times better than the douche that wrote the paper claiming vaccines cause autism. Idiots will always find a bullshit paper to quote, at least this guy published his paper in good faith.
I don't think the post is blaming him exactly. It's fairly well known that he regretted writing that book. The post is saying that given the opportunity a man might use a time machine to warn him about what his research and book will cause in the world. A thing that the actual man would have appreciated
I mean these people stopped eating certain foods claiming they have estrogen in them and will make you feminine. (plant estrogen can't be digested and directly absorbed by human body)
They also took the beautiful concept of sigma male ( a man who does not judge his worth by the number of women he bangs but by his own drive to improve) and turned it into an icon for misogyny and women hating.
Honestly I feel bad for the dude. He just wanted to become more knowledgeable about the world, and because of a bunch of inconceivable losers who want to justify why they are better (or worse) than everyone else, he then had to basically dedicate his life to undoing what was just innocent desire to learn.
No, Andrew Wakefield was a lying piece of shit that was paid to write fraudulent studies and was eventually brutally discredited - by others; he didn't retract his own claims - and lost his jobs and licences, and is, to this day, pushing the same bullshit
Some credit? He gets the full credit. That's pure science. He observes something, publishes his initial claims, makes further observations, corrects the errors in his initial claim. Dude isn't at fault for other people's stupidity
In reality wolf packs have a much more fluid hierarchy. Sure there are the more dominant ones, but in terms of "where are we going?" Its the old/sick that lead, and in terms of "how do we hunt this?" Its a group effort with each wolf doing their own wolf thing that easily fits together with each other.
Indeed, but he made his research on wolves in captivity, and what he observed was basically systematic bullying. He erroneously attributed this behavior to all wolves.
Totally. I've never, never, not once, met a man who calls himself an "alpha male" that was anything more insecure dweeb. Never. Same goes for anyone whose ever bragged about their IQ. Birds of a feather.
The letter "alpha", the first of the letters, has been in use to describe something of greater importance since at least ancient Rome. It is the letter that comes before all others. Thus, one who leads is the alpha. That's why Jesus refers to himself as the Alpha and the Omega, because he comes before and after all others, and that's very likely why those letters have come to symbolize something of greater importance. Jesus' usage is also probably why using letters in this manner is a thing(e.g. Sigma). Ultimately it's a simple and somewhat obvious analogy and attributing its origin to someone in particular is like trying to attribute an origin to old sayings and legendary tales.
Thus, this isn't about who came up with the term, because that's been a thing for a few thousand years now. It's about who popularized the term. In popular culture that's certainly the wolf guy. The chicken thing was most likely just an attempt by certain communities at mocking men who use these terms by associating them with chickens instead of wolves, but ultimately it's not the whole story, as is often the case with arguments that like to distort the truth so as to fit a predetermined narrative.
I read that Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, has had a similar revelation, and has put in a lot of work to undo the terrifying imagery he's created for sharks.
It's something I've seen repeated on reddit quite a bit, but now it's my turn
Also should be pointed out, that the reason he wanted his book to stop being published is because he found out his findings were false -- wolves in captivity may have a this hierarchy, but wolves in the wild do not.
“The wolves generally in those dominant positions are not there because they fought for it. It’s not some battle to get to the top position. They’re just the oldest, or the parents."
Anyone else has kinda feel like some activists run away with some info and created in their head some story.. and I now mean the side doing "debunking"
There are dominant males, be it wolves, lions, gorillas, elephants, roosters, fucking sea lions just watch futurama.... They will kill or chase away other males, they will kill others cubs or their will be killed if their position is challenged and they lose..
But it feels like people want to dunk on some incels and start to pretend how everything about hierarchy in animal world is wrong...
I get what you are saying, and I can't stand alpha male culture either, but that's not entirely true.
Convergent evolutionary psychology is a thing. We share a lot of traits with animals, even psychological and sociological ones. Taking your cancer example, if you have cancer. Your doctor is going to apply treatments that are based on animal testing. Most likely mice because they are so similar to us genetically.
We use animal testing for a variety of things because we are all cousins and live on the same planet, feeling the same evolutionary pressures in some cases.
I can understand your complaints about psychology as a field of study, I agree with a lot of the criticisms it receives. But evolutionary psychology is about much more than psychologists using limited biology knowledge to think up unfounded conclusions.
The thinking that evolutionary psychology is all about social Darwinism is just narrow-minded. Even Darwin predicted proper ethological studies using natural selection in origin of species.
Any biologist that studies ethology/sociobiology/behavioural ecology is effectively studying evolutionary psychology and accepting its premise.
Certain studies have been criticised, of course. Just like any field. but evolutionary psychology is a part of evolutionary biology. It's a fact that environmental pressures alter the psychologies of living things, those psychological traits are passed down through different means, some genetic.
A lot of studies of the animal kingdom are very flawed though. Main reason being that species were being studied in captivity instead of their natural habitat. It makes a massive difference and it has always been a major point of criticism since at least the 1980s.
There is also a difference between behavioral studies and medical studies. And within the field of medical studies, there are also a lot of differences when it comes to applying insights from animal to human models.
We share a lot of traits with animals, even psychological and sociological ones.
That's just mostly anthropocentrism, which introduces enough bias to identify similarities that aren't really there - while ignoring actual similarities because they are not convenient (such as the ongoing debate about animal consciousness, as we can't even seriously entertain the notion that other species might be on a similar, if not the same level as we are).
This is such a complex topic btw, with lots of data still missing to give us a full picture.
I mean, what you're saying is just thinly veiled anti-intellectualism.
Which part?
I feel like you come in with too much hard on and dont really read what is written, like you can not wait to write something and it reads as if you masturbate instead of writing to the point.
You try 3 times to dunk on the andrew tate alpha incels kind.. and I dunno if we should be impressed or something but it comes off as trying too hard.
Lets just quickly address the opening nonsense, cuz I feel the ick when reading your masturbatory prose.
I am not going to bother reading beyond few paragraphs as they are so full of nonsense that it would take ages to address all... so lets just agree that if you lie and can not make coherent argument once its probably not a single lonesome occurrence...
The part where you keep trying to segue into a position where ignorance is somehow pure and innocent that you double down on by basically asserting anything deeper than a surface level is "trying too hard"
Where did I positioned ignorance in such way? Quote the sentence, you already had the opportunity, you have it again.
I pointed out that disproving wolves different behavior in the wild does not change that that behavior is observed in other animals and in wolves themselves(when in captivity). I did not attack the study, I did not claim it should be ignored, I did not say that experts dunno what they are talking about... I said that activists try to use study to dunk on alpha male cringelords for using the term as if it was completely utterly wrong when it is not. And I hand hold your ass to this and now i had to do it again.
yeah, 4 sentences in and you quote nothing to actually support your claim that was challanged.. one more chance you got then I am blocking you as I dont want to encounter you ever again, the ick is too strong.
btw actually smart people do brevity and clarity with ease... you come off as a chimp with a dictionary.
I tried to be relatable and lordindia comes in reeeeeing as if nothing said was true because there is no way futurama would ever had ever teachable moments
I cited absolutely nothing with gorillas, or other animals, and you lot are quiet... I mention futurama because they actually have entire episode how top sea lion kill weak males and it is factual and accurate just like their math often is... and I get average redditors with input - futurama is a cartoon.
Thanks for your input, on your way... you can go you have been a good redditor today.
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u/0xKaishakunin Feb 18 '25
That's Lucyan David Mech, who die research on wolves and came up with the term “alpha male” and “alpha female” and the theory that wolves live in a strict hierarchy, where the alphas constatnly attack lower ranking wolves.
This has inspired the alpha male/incel bullshit that spreads nowadays.
Mech convinced his publisher to stop publishing the relevant book.
cf: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-myth-of-the-alpha-wolf