But has group selection favored groups of people who are resistant to the idea of group selection?

Interesting article on Wilson's recent work on group selection, and his general influence on evo psych.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15wils.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Comments

[TGGP]

If your title is serious, I'm not sure how believers/disbelievers of group selection form meaningful "groups". They make arguments that support one another on their side occasionally but haven't created any Institutes for the Study of Group Selection or anything. One of the primary beneficiaries of Wilson's Sociobiology revolution has been Mr. Selfish Gene himself.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

TGGP, my post wasn't narrowly serious, but I think Wilson claims there is widespread resistance among people to the idea of group selection, that can't be accounted for by those people simply engaging in a bayesian type reasoning process.

[TGGP]

There was a time when people were rather amenable to "good of the species" arguments, as Eliezer Yudkowsky has discussed. That was largely displaced by figures like Dawkins. What we see could simply be confirmation bias which does not depend on which level of selection is being examined but is simply contingent on whether it is currently popular.