I was listening to an episode of a podcast called "Book Club From Hell" some months ago (yes, it's taken me months to make this blog post) about a book titled "The Sigma Male Bible". I gave up on listening to the episode despite my mild interest the topic at hand because there's a bit too much of the hosts laughing at their own jokes. Which seems to be a trend that will keep me from revisiting the podcast. Which, in turn, is a shame because the podcast concept is great.
Regardless, "The Sigma Male Bible" spends a lot of time comparing the various types of male archetypes that largely exist in the minds of self-proclaimed sigma males (e.g., alpha male, beta male, sigma male). The Greek alphabet male classification system is basically astrology signs for guys. I believe alpha and beta males have a bit more visibility, so I'll only give my very glib explanation of a sigma male here. It's a guy with no friends or girlfriend who convinces himself he's in such a situation not because he's off-putting and lacking personality, but rather because he's just so focused on his own goals he doesn't have time for all of that.
But mocking the sigma male concept is not my purpose in this blog post (that's just a bit of a bonus). Instead, I want to focus on some discussion between the podcast hosts about the concept of an alpha male. They were discussing how the alpha male concept was supposedly reflective of the hierarchy of wolf packs. However, the alpha male wolf was a fiction, disavowed even by the scientist who originally coined the term. This isn't the first time I've heard this argument, and the implication seems to be that since no such concept really exists among wolf packs, there are similarly no alpha males among humans.
And that leads me to the title of this blog post: the faulty analogy fallacy. In short, a bad analogy for a concept invalidates the concept. In reality, the concept being discussed may be completely valid , i.e., humans can exhibit alpha male traits even if wolves do not. The problem is someone tried to explain the concept with a faulty analogy. I could be wrong, but I don't think that matches any formal fallacies that I'm familiar with, and maybe it's really an example of an inadvertent straw man. I'll have to give it more thought and see if I can come up with other examples.
As for the "Book Club From Hell" podcast, I wish those guys all the success in the world, but I likely won't be listening any more. However, if you enjoy their jokes even half as much as the hosts do, you're going to love it.
