What predictions might you make about human behavior that someone who believed in altruism would not?
My impression is that when people say they believe altruism exists, they mean that they believe people derive pleasure from altruistic behavior. There are some people like Kantians who might be imagining something else and I agree that version of altruism is wrong. But I think that view of altruism is a minority one.
Let's imagine a computer simulation that has various organisms. Some of these organisms are programmed to sacrifice their own lives for the lives of others in their area who have no genetic relationship at all. Is it accurate to describe the behavior of these organisms as altruistic?
Are you aware that group selection has come back into scientific acceptability since the 80s? The original experiments assumed static populations, but when you allow populations to have varying growth rates group selectionism does much much better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_selection
What is something you used to believe, preferably something concrete with direct or implied predictions, that you now know was dead wrong. Was your belief rational given what you knew and could know back then, or was it irrational, and why?
Edit: I feel like some of these are getting a bit glib and political. Please try to explain what false assumptions or biases were underlying your beliefs - be introspective - this is LW after all.