@balajis.eth

Individually alpha is collectively beta. That’s actually the centrist argument against the sort of caricatured ultra-masculinity that’s in vogue today. I understand how that ideology arose, but it actually makes you weak, because it inhibits scaled cooperation. Essentially: in almost every context in life you can’t and shouldn’t be the leader. Even Elon isn’t running the water supply or sewing his own clothes. In those contexts, he’s just an individual like any other, operating in a context where he isn’t the boss. A “beta” if you absolutely must, or better yet a peer — even if he’s a superalpha at SpaceX. Steve Jobs understood this too. Also a superalpha at Apple, he nevertheless understood in an email towards the end of his life (attached below) how dependent he was on the rest of humanity in most other contexts. What few understand is that being a leader is actually a huge responsibility. You simply can’t be at the top of every hierarchy in the world nor should you seek to be. A good life is more about win/win cooperation than the quixotic pursuit of zero-sum dominance. The fact that Western societies have lost faith in both God and the State is part of what’s driven them towards the most primitive sort of chest-thumping Internet he-manism, but being “alpha” all the time doesn’t scale. Cooperation does.

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