John,
I'm snipping the stuff about absolute vs relative fitness,
not because it is unimportant, but because it seems best to
me to tackle only one issue at a time.  I think that you
still don't quite appreciate the altruistic vs mutualistic
distinction.

"John Edser"  wrote in message
news:cch899$1kgi$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Jim Menegay wrote:-
> > JM:-
> > The [Hamilton altruistic] gene does, on average, increase
> > the absolute fitness of the recipients and the general
> > population.
>
> JE:-
> But the actor _is_ a member of "the general population"
> so the action must on average increase the absolute
> fitness of actors.

True.

> This means that the cost c can
> only be rationalised as a mutualised investment for the
> actor and not as an altruistic donation.

This is incorrect, if you imagine that it is the altruistic
actor that is doing the rationalizing.  Trivers' reciprocal
altruism can be viewed as an investment.  Hamilton's
unilateral altruism cannot be viewed as an investment.  In
Hamilton's model, the altruistic action is a dead loss to
the actor - there is no sense in which it can be viewed as
an investment made with the expectation that it will result
in returns during the actor's lifetime.

Altruistic actors that happen to live in altruistic families
do actually benefit by being the recipients of a lot of
altruism, but this is not caused by the altruistic actor's
actions.  It is an accident of birth.  Selfish individuals
that happen to live in altruistic families do better than
altruists in those families.  Selfish individuals that happen
to live in selfish families do better than altruistic
individuals in those families.  From every point of view,
it is to your own interest to not act altruistically.
Nevertheless, says Hamilton, altruistic behavior can be
favored by natural selection if rb>c.

> Altruism has been
> incorrectly argued using a misuse of a statistical term:
> "average".  A specific actor _can_ make  _less_ than the
> average when this is _not_ what was being  selected _for_.
> What was being selected for was an absolute mutual fitness
> increase and not a decrease. In common terms this is called
> an investment cost.

In common terms, it cannot be called an investment when the
return on investment is realized before the investment is
made.  And that is what is happening here.  The carrier
of a Hamilton altruistic gene receives the benefit at birth.
He is born into an altruistic family.  The cost is paid
later - when the carrier is forced by the gene to act
altruistically against his own interests.  It is not an
investment in the sense in which that word is normally used.
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