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Comment by fu9ar | Hacker News Reader

Calling an Industrial Age invention a primate dominance ritual is insane.

I don't think that's the parents meaning.

There always have been and will be dominance rituals. Some would have been physical fights, but in modern office culture punching subordinates is seen as unacceptable - but some people still need some dominance rituals - and picking a fight over "do as I tell you and turn up on time, thus demonstrating I am the dominant one" is pretty tame stuff compared to a silver back ripping your ear off.

Making the argument that those two behaviors, management insisting on punctuality and violent bodily mutilation, are commensurable is the exact kind of insane thinking that I am criticizing.

It's the motivation that is the same. If you haven't seen it in action you're either very lucky, or not very observant.

Yes, but going back to the parent's point, while you may think it's instinctive to have a dominance trait, the "come on time" rule is only there probably because the manager's superordinate instilled it in him. I guarantee you we are not going back to our primate roots when we wake up and get to office, and OP might be thinking this in too much of a literal sense.

No. It's not the same motivation. Human hierarchical social behavior is not the same as other primates. It's much more complicated and in most human situations social status is based on a constellation of intangibles rather than who can literally rip the other's face off.

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