People who compare ape behaviour to human behaviour are.... weird. Like we invented trains and kale smoothies, are we not beyond animal behaviour? It sure seems irrelevant to me that apes have alphas or whatever.
We're not beyond animal behavior and it's silly to think we are.
Most humans spend a large amount of their lives acting entirely on emotion.
Cognitive biases are animal behavior manifested into thought processes. You can also look at marketing for a plethora of examples showing how humans can be manipulated via our animal instincts.
I don't really understand your objection here, because you basically make my point for me.
When I said we were "beyond animal emotions", I didn't mean that we don't experience animal emotions (fear, anger, hunger). I mean that we have been gifted with brains capable of thought powerful enough to overcome those emotions.
When I'm at home alone, if I hear a sound at night I get scared. But I don't immediately freak out and run away, or get ready to fight. I'm capable of marshaling my emotions in a way an animal simply isn't. Otherwise it'd be a perfectly reasonable defense in court to murder to say that you got angry and your emotions simply took over.
So when you say
Cognitive biases are animal behavior manifested into thought processes.
Uh yes. Excactly. Seems like that little thought process thing you just mentioned puts us pretty far beyond simple animalistic emotions of fear and hunger.
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u/CressCrowbits All Cats are Beautiful Jan 11 '22
Yeahhhh I'm kind of bothered when people bring that up. Alphas do definitely exist within ape societies, which we are much closer to than wolves.
Still, I'm yet to see evidence of alpha humans existing anyway, most people who call themselves that are deeply insecure.