TheRedArchive

~ archived since 2018 ~

Of Apex and Alphas

Black Label Logic
July 27, 2018

We did a Red Man Group podcast on “Looks, Money, Game” a few weeks back, it was an interesting podcast to do, given that there wasn’t a real consensus on the panel about which one is the most important, but everyone agrees with the fact that ideally you want at least two of them. The idea for this essay came to me when I was preparing for the podcast by having an internal debate with myself about factors that influence performance in the sexual market place. My internal chain of reasoning was along the lines of various trade-offs we are willing to make when shopping for a sexual partner. My preferences for a woman’s looks are largely centered on breasts, butt, hair and face, but I was asking myself how these four factors interact. In an ideal world, I would prefer a woman with bigger breasts, a bubble butt, long red hair (in a particular shade), and an innocent looking yet pretty face. I also tend to prefer either green or blue eyes, over other colors.

So, in my head I constructed somewhat of a March Madness bracket for these various characteristics and had them play against each other, mostly out of curiosity. This lead me to figure out which characteristics are soft-preferences, which are hard preferences and which are somewhere in the middle. As I worked myself through this, I found myself thinking about preferences, choice and options because these are closely linked. This lead down a rabbit hole of considerations on sexual market pricing, preferences and trades, that then lead down a fairly long string of thinking on building the optimal sexual market performer. While doing this, I ran across the Apex Fallacy and the nadir fallacy.

An apex fallacy is a conditional fallacy which happens when one evaluates how good a group is doing by the highest performing members. The converse fallacy is called the nadir fallacy, which is when one evaluates a group based on the worst members. I’m going to be using these with a slightly different definition in this essay, where the definition will be “when one evaluates how good one is doing based on how good other members of multiple groups are doing.”

The March Madness Bracket

In the Red Pill sphere the debate is always raging over “Do looks matter?“, “Does money matter?“, “Does style matter?“, “Does game matter?” and the answer is yes, they all do but how much varies based on many different factors. Two early SMV posts I made were the female sexual strategies part 1 and part 2, I did those posts to illustrate the difference between women and men in the sexual market place. Women are by nature in-demand mass market products, most men will sleep with most women. A woman has to be a Hindenburg of psychological disorders and a physical train-wreck in slow motion for her in order to not find at least one guy who will sleep with her, therefore women have to engage in differentiation to set themselves apart from other women and signal what type of men they are looking for. One could say that men’s sexual discernment is more or less a binary case of “Does she get me hard or not?”

Men on the other hand start out as products for which there is mediocre demand. Most women will not sleep with most men out of the box and a man doesn’t have to do a lot to place himself below the hurdle rate for most women. The goal for a man is therefore to not only ensure that he remains over the more generalized hurdle rate which is shared among women, which we can define as “stay in shape, have game, dress decently, don’t be broke“. However, he also has to see among which groups of women he would have a natural competitive advantage. In essence, those market positions that a woman signals.

The female hurdle rate, colloquially “You must reach this SMV for me to ride you“, which is a binary judgment, “Yes” or “No”. However, they also make trade-offs and have different preferences. This is the difference between “Mr. Right” and “Mr. Right now“. When a woman draws up her March Madness bracket, it’s not just the final, it’s the whole tournament, however you have to make sure you qualify for that tournament before you can make your way to the final. Once you’re in the tournament you are competing against other men who also made it in, which means that they have handled the same basic things you did.

To qualify for the March Madness Bracket “Looks Count” [1] to have a chance at taking home the gold, “Have A Look” [2].

Your Competitive Advantage and Core Competencies

A competitive advantage is an area in which you are better suited to competing than your competition is, and a core competency is a hard to replicate, and unique combination of traits and characteristics that you have that your competition does not. The Venn diagram of these two concepts overlap quite a bit, in that core competencies form a competitive advantage, but not all competitive advantages are core competencies.

I wrote an essay about finding a competitive advantage in the sexual market place some time ago, my conclusion from that essay ended on:

Both of these perspectives, combined, comes down to “internalize the general and personalize the particular”. You have to internalize the general “rules” of the red pill like AF/BB, Hypergamy, Solipsism, shit-tests and everything in between, but your strategy and tactics for dealing with them have to be personalized for you. You can’t gain a competitive advantage, by competing against someone at their game.

What I meant by this and stand-by is that there are general things every man more or less has to do in order to increase his sexual market value, these are among others, being in shape, learning how clothes are supposed to fit him, fairly basic grooming techniques, learning game, and having his financial house in order. There are also particular things each man should do in order to increase his sexual market value that involve finding his competitive advantage and competitive competencies in the sexual market place.

One funny thing about the red pill is that many of our concepts are abstract, things like “Alpha” and “Beta” are abstract constructs, in essence they are boxes filled with traits, behaviors and many other things that help predict or explain a man’s performance in the sexual market place. I’ve noticed that many of the more literal minded men tend to take these constructs, in their mind tie them with a man, or an image of what they perceive as alpha, and then create a checklist for what they need to change about themselves. This is not an entirely negative process, however it can be quite counter-productive. One of the early mistakes of game, which is still being perpetuated by many Pick-up companies is this checklist. They dress up all the people in their bootcamp in very similar clothes (black leather shoes, black leather jacket, black jeans), equip them with the same game materials, and send them into the same area to do approaches, like a zerg-rush.

They apply a one-size fits all model of success for the sexual market place, which is not unlike what many major consulting agencies do for their clients. A major consulting agency develops a proprietary methodology, combines it with various general methodologies from business research, and apply the model to all their clients. This is a very good way to maximize their client turnover, and can generate a lot of mediocre companies, because quite frankly many make the same rookie mistakes and just fixing those helps. However, it is generally not a good way to create companies with outstanding performance, because the advice would be the same regardless of the input, it makes sure they have all bases covered, but nothing more.

In order to create high performers within any market place, one has to tailor advice to the particular person or company. The gentleman who was my example in “Of Lifestyles and Limitations” is an example of someone who gets paid for maintaining his physique and thus he has a competitive advantage over most men when it comes to maintaining a solid physique. A man who gets paid to perform on stage naturally has an advantage over other men when it comes to among other things leveraging social proof.

If you for a minute envision a sexual market place where all men are exactly 6 ft 1”, 220 lbs at 10% body fat, are in perfectly fitted clothes, have their finances in order and have the same level of proficiency in game. How would you stand apart in that market? What would be your competitive advantage and what would be the hard to copy traits, behaviors skills and knowledge that form your core competencies?

Summary and Conclusions

In a previous essay I made the statement that men judge their performance by the impact they have on the world, whereas women judge themselves by how the world impacts them. Thus, when we as men judge performance, be it our own of that of others, we do so by looking outside ourselves for objective high performers within a given sphere of competition. This is quite apparent in the Red Pill because much like a corporation we have key performance indicators for everything. We have body fat percentages, height, weight, income, income streams, notch counts, and god knows what else. Women do not really work like we do, a guy focuses on 10% body fat, a woman gets tingles when she sees abs.

I elected to use the Apex-fallacy to describe a phenomenon whereby a man compares himself with A+ performers in many areas and seek to reach their level in multiple areas. However, A+ performers get to that level because they focus specifically on being an A+ performer in few areas. If you try to get a physique like a physique athlete or body builder, the financial and investment knowledge of the world’s best money manager, the psychological insight of a clinical psychologist, the body language knowledge of Joe Navarro, and just keep adding to that list, you will never be a top performer in all those areas. Furthermore, you never develop a competitive advantage or core competencies. What these men have developed is a set of skills, traits and knowledge, that is uniquely theirs, copying that and most likely doing it worse won’t grant you a competitive advantage. Donovan’s words this very well when he says “You will get more pussy being an A+ in one area than a B- in every area” and by seeking to reach the apex of A+ in looks, game, money, style and everything else you will never outperform those who focus on just one of them.

I’ve had an essay in my draft folder for a while now titled “Of Alphas and Accomplishments” that I haven’t really been able to finish. In it I go over some of the best pure players I know who are also naturals. The funny thing about these guys is that none of them happens to be Chad Thundercock. Most of them are between 5 ft 6 and 5 ft 10, 160 – 170 lbs, 12 – 15% body fat, in the type of shape you get from engaging in regular, recreational physical activity, they work pretty normal jobs, and are pretty must just “normal dudes”. However, they all have something unique about them, one of them is really into style so he always has a unique a Bohemian-Dandy look. One of them is a musician and regularly performs as a hobby. One is extremely quick-witted, and has a great sense of humor.

They all perform to a level on “Looks, Money, Game” to where their combination of the three gets them above the hurdle-rate for a great majority of women, meaning that they are players in the tournament. Then they build on their natural differentiation to further set themselves apart and zero-in on a market. Once you get to a point on looks, money, game where you appeal to the general market, then you need to start being selective about which market(s) you want to have an advantage in.

In a world where the average man is 5 ft 10, has a BMI of 29, a 40 inch waist, wears cargo-shorts, earns $49k a year, and gets $2 haircuts, getting into the top 20% of men is not difficult, but once you get into the top 20% the competition stiffens. Then you are competing with men who have something more than just the basics, they have dialed in on what makes them unique, and what other men do not have. If you want above average results, then handling what women define as the bare minimum (passing the hurdle rate) is not enough, you have to have what dials you in as unique as well.

Michael Porter has a great perspective on strategy when he says that it’s perhaps more important for a company to decide what not to do, as it is for a company to decide what to do.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

As always you can buy my book Gendernomics at Amazon.com as both paperback and Kindle

Sources

[1] The Rational Male – Looks Count

[2] The Rational Male – Have a look

TheRedArchive is an archive of Red Pill content, including various subreddits and blogs. This post has been archived from the blog Black Label Logic.

Black Label Logic archive

Download the post

Want to save the post for offline use on your device? Choose one of the download options below:

Post Information
Title Of Apex and Alphas
Author Black Label Logic
Date July 27, 2018 10:44 AM UTC (5 years ago)
Blog Black Label Logic
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Black-Label-Logic/of-apex-andalphas.24162
https://theredarchive.com/blog/24162
Original Link https://blacklabellogic.com/2018/07/27/of-apex-and-alphas/
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

© TheRedArchive 2024. All rights reserved.
created by /u/dream-hunter