Altruism and Game Theory

I was talking to my colleague a couple days ago and a rather sticky topic came about. Usually i avoid talking about altruism, the desire to help others, from an evolutionary point of view, as it brings up bags of game theory.

I think yinyin would be the only person so far to have hear me talk about altruism more than a couple times. I would often say to her, "Hmm... i should be nice and helpful to this person coz he might still be useful".

This does make me sound very evil. That i am helpful with a motive, and as my colleague would like to say, calculative. Which is rightly so, not because i'm calculative, but becuase i'm always calling her names too, like evil, selfish, antisocial etc, which also is rightly so, not because she is evil, selfish or antisocial, but because i'm the one saying it. In more simplistic terms, i'm saying that i'm right and she's wrong.

Say someone is drowning in a river, and a person jumps in to save the drowning person, and act of altruism. Studying psychology, one would come across the question, "Does true altruism exist?".

When the drowning person is a relative, one could argue that helping person gains by saving somone who comes from the same gene pool, therefore helping another person is strengthening one's own gene pool. So instinctively, humans would want to help their own.

But what if the drowning person is a stranger? What rationale is there for another person to jump in to save someone, who is a potential rival of the person's own gene pool? It is here that we must discuss reciprocity. As social animals, saving another person would increase the chance of reciprocity and therefore strengthen one's own gene pool should there be a need for help in the future.

Not that humans consciously help people to expect higher chances of reciprocity. But as social animals, we've learn over the time we've been alive that people tend to respond with nice-ness to nice-ness.

Which brings me back to my case of helping people. Recognising the evolutionary side of helping, understanding it and performing cost and benefit analysis, does it really make my help less genuine? Is ignorance more magnanimous than knowing? For i have never once demanded help from someone citing that i've help him/her before as the reasons for helping me.

Although personally, i do feel dissapointed if someone i help alot doesn't help me when it was my turn in need. But who won't feel dissapointed? Does applying evolution theory makes one more devious, cunning, calculative? Can i not, with knowledge of altruism and why it occurs, not offer help with no demands?

Is being honest with altruism a flaw?