"Helping others at no cost to oneself is generosity, but altruism implies sacrifice, yes? We can happily disagree on that - I was merely pointing that it is a very clear and usable definition (from Sober/Wilson) and addresses all the criticisms raised by sceptical biologists."
I really sometimes wonder what science would be like if most scientists were women or if it were created in a different culture.
For example, to see altruism as involving sacrifice only makes sense if you take the division between self and other as absolute. I have never experienced it as such. With most people, especially the ones I care about, it feels more like a continuum, and it actually makes me happy to do things for them, with them, etc... It doesn't feel like their gain and my loss; it feels like an overall gain.
Joanna