RE: Extreme Altruism and the Psychopathic Brain.
"From the Darwinian perspective, an altruist favors survival of the species, while a psychopath favors self-preservation."
That first part is not necessarily accurate. While there are some group-selectionists out there, I think Dawkins is a better representative of the Darwinian perspective. And based on his books, true altruists cannot really be evolutionarily viable. Mostly this is because it is particular genes that are being selected for, rather than "species".
Meaning: if a gene or set of genes makes it more likely for the individual to sacrifice itself for other individuals which do not carry those genes, those genes will fail to replicate through reproduction.
In this way, your thought about extreme altruism as being defective would seem to have some merit.
That being said, natural selection has now jumped from biology to culture; so in that sense, altruistic ideals could be passed on effectively, even while individuals holding those ideals sacrifice themselves for the group. Cultural memes can spread broader and quicker than a sperm or an egg. :)
Thanks for the detailed response. I'm not familiar with Dawkins.
This is certainly true. Along with that, society's elimination of natural selection also allows other potentially undesirable traits to perpetuate. For instance, we save babies born with congenital heart abnormalities allowing them to pass these genes along. The list is long but you get the point.
We could change this but there is much social resistance to anything that smacks of Eugenics since Hitler gave it a black eye and the undeniably slippery slope of what is "desirable" and what is not.
Via top-down social programming extreme altruism is viewed as desirable when, in fact, it is probably one of those traits natural selection would keep attenuated in the human species.
If you're interested, I'd highly recommend The Selfish Gene, by Dawkins. It's not a book about a gene that makes a person selfish, but instead how genes themselves are selfish replicators. It's a look at evolution from a very different perspective (at least from how I thought of it before I read this book).
"society's elimination of natural selection also allows other potentially undesirable traits to perpetuate"
True, and that may lead to problems. At the same time, I think the evolution of culture has made certain traits more valuable and beneficial - for life and the ease of suffering - where such traits could not have survived the harsh necessities of life in the wild.
Thank you for that recommendation. I'll look into it.