Richard, and others:

We can't work out our disagreements based on what I said in a TED talk. That's 18 minutes with no footnotes and a mandate to make novel ideas accessible to a broad audience. The debate that I look forward to having with you is over whether the situation has materially changed since you wrote The Selfish Gene, which completely convinced me when I was in college that group selection was rubbish.

In chapter 9 of The Righteous Mind I describe four pieces of new evidence -- four findings or new perspectives that make the case must stronger than it appeared in the 1970s: 1) major transitions theory, extended out to human cultures as a transition 2) shared intentionality (work by Michael Tomasello) 3) Gene-Culture co-evolution (Boyd and Richerson) 4) Genetic evolution is much much faster than we thought 30 years ago

I do not believe the case is proved either way, but I think multi-level selection is "back in the frame," at very least, and it is time for a broader discussion of it -- one conducted with curiosity, not anger.

For those of you who don't want to buy my book, just email me and I'll send you chapter 9.

jon haidt haidt at virginia dot edu