Remix.run Logo
bubblyworld 3 days ago

Have a read about kin selection, for instance. There are lots of facts about e.g social insects (like the male/female/sterile ratio iirc) that were thought to only be explainable by group selection, but later were found to work out purely from considerations of gene selection. I'm just a layperson though, would highly recommend Dawkins writing on this stuff. It's much less polemic than his writing on religion, if that puts you off at all.

I think the basic criticism of group selection is that at an individual level it can be beneficial to go against the group's goal, and you need to explain why that doesn't happen (even very small advantages are rapidly boosted by selection). This is one of the great puzzles of selection - how does cooperation evolve from selfish interests? The theory of group selection just asserts that it does, which is not very satisfactory.