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Babbler example is a bit confusing. So they have both a dominance dynamic and a prestige dynamic? Shouldn't they be at odds?
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Sorry it's confusing. Yes babblers have both dominance and prestige. Dominance explains mostly who mates and who wins in showdowns.
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Are there two alphas? The most dominant and the most prestigious? Or is there correlation?
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Only one alpha, based on dominance. Zahavi says to think of dominance as ordinal, prestige as cardinal/real-valued.
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I think the cardinal/ordinal thing is key. Dominance is binary (can beat up/can't beat up). Ordinal can underwrite a currency
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Yes, although I'm skeptical of treating dominance as strictly ordinal. You can be the alpha by a wide or narrow margin, for example.
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I think the fluidity of prestige is what's important for underwriting currency. Dominance can't be modified in fine-grained steps.
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