Summary: Stop Denying The Alpha-Beta Paradigm

Stop Denying the Alpha-Beta Paradigm

There’s one meme I’ve grown beyond tired of. It goes something like this:

“I don’t believe in this alpha-beta distinction. Does it really matter?”

“This alpha-beta thing is stupid, people are way more complicated than that.”

“Only losers sit around talking about alpha and beta.” (This one is really an anti-intellectualism argument; to quote Bill Cosby, “intellectuals go to school to study what people do naturally.” Talking about it is the point.)

Alpha and beta have been thrown around since the early pickup artist (PUA) and game days so far as I can tell, but my first conception of the alpha-beta dichotomy came from Roissy/Heartiste. In the Chateau, alpha and beta function as social roles on a sliding scale

And then our minds make up rational explanations for it to boot. Good economics, good politics and good management are all about leveraging these instincts for a rational good of some sort, not about expecting to change people’s base natures. Philosophies that have instead tried to change or circumvent human nature (like Marxist socialism or open polyamory) have met with a marked lack of widespread success.

As to Vox’s point that two groups is too restrictive, I basically concur that a macro look at the sexual marketplace requires more refinement. But when doing a first-pass analysis of a social experiment (like a pickup or a relationship), alpha vs beta is usually good enough to inform a basic explanation, and that’s usually good enough to motivate a student’s behavior to

You see this with some of the “real man” shaming that goes around, like some white-knight shouting that a “a real man is good to people.” It may be desireable, but there’s nothing particularly alpha in that description of a guy. A “good man” can be strong or a good man can be a wimp. A good man is usually attractive if he’s strong…but then he’s covered a key attractor and the “good” is just icing for women who seek that trait.

Finally, men judge men differently than women do, so a guy may say “oh yeah, he’s great, you should totally date him,” while the woman he’s talking to will judge him too low on the social totem pole to get her tingling. (This is analogous to a woman trying to pass her homely friend to a man by telling him “she’s really sweet.”) The male model of teamwork is one where everyone has different ability but everyone has comparable social value. You see this in well-operating sports teams: benchwarmers who are playing their role are just as included in the team activities and rewards as the all-conference