>you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’ I mean that's all true enough, but their point, at least narrowly read as a general observation about animals, stand

>you see ‘alpha’ as a synonym for ‘leader’ I mean that's all true enough, but their point, at least narrowly read as a general observation about animals, stands. There are ample examples in nature of dominance hierarchies, even if wolves aren't one of them. Of course, as you note, looking to these examples as a basis for a personal ethos for tough guy psychology is error riddled in so many ways you could write a book unpacking it all. (E.g. why choose other animals remote from the lineage of apes to which we belong, why for that matter not just study humans in the first place, why hitch any ethos to what happens in nature, why not look at what it says about people who seem to need to indulge in this search, etc.) It's good to show that this argument fails on its own terms with its own chosen example, but getting into that kind of back and forth risks implicitly agreeing that it would be right to think that way, should such an example be found in nature. And those examples do exist in nature even if not necessarily with wolves. But as you noted that doesn't have anything to do with better or worse, right or wrong, and is completely lacking in self-awareness about the actual psychological dynamics that causes people to need these kinds of narratives.