"IIRC, the primary reason that group selection is thought to be wrong is that it (apparently) can't yield an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) -- it will alw

"IIRC, the primary reason that group selection is thought to be wrong is that it (apparently) can't yield an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) -- it will always be better for the persistence of any individual's DNA if that individual refuses to be altruistic." This sounds reasonable if you consider only one generation, or only the individual. But if you consider the whole group or species in the long run, the effect you see is exactly what you describe, i.e. groups that encourage this kind of behavior will outcompete groups that don't. So for a species to survive, it is much more important that the group survives than just an individual. If the individual survives, but it can't reproduce, then the species won't survive in the long term. I think the important thing is to determine what behavior better represents reality, meaning what would explain the survival of current species on earth, not just try to confirm survival of the fittest for an individual.