Multilevel Selection versus individual selection. Complements or alternates?

A nice Wikipedia article on a topic of worthy public debate but for which our current state of knowledge precludes a hard consensus.  The topic is multilevel selection, called Group Selection by Wikipedia.  

 Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the more conventional level of the individual.

Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the behavior of animals could affect their survival and reproduction as groups, speaking for instance of actions for the good of the species. In the 1930s, R.A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane proposed the concept of kin selection, a form of altruism from the gene-centered view of evolution, arguing that animals should sacrifice for their relatives, and thereby implying that they should not sacrifice for non-relatives. From the mid 1960s, evolutionary biologists such as John Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton, George C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins argued that natural selection acted primarily at the level of the individual. They argued on the basis of mathematical models that individuals would not altruistically sacrifice fitness for the sake of a group. They persuaded the majority of biologists that group selection did not occur, other than in special situations such as the haplodiploid social insects like honeybees (in the Hymenoptera), where kin selection was possible.

In 1994 David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober argued for multi-level selection, including group selection, on the grounds that groups, like individuals, could compete. In 2010 three authors including E. O. Wilson, known for his work on social insects especially ants, again revisited the arguments for group selection. They argued that group selection can occur when competition between two or more groups, some containing altruistic individuals who act cooperatively together, is more important for survival than competition between individuals within each group, provoking a strong rebuttal from a large group of evolutionary biologists and behavior analysts.

It is a topic which is consequential but also potentially disturbing.

The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne summarized the arguments in The New York Review of Books in non-technical terms as follows:

Group selection isn't widely accepted by evolutionists for several reasons. First, it's not an efficient way to select for traits, like altruistic behavior, that are supposed to be detrimental to the individual but good for the group. Groups divide to form other groups much less often than organisms reproduce to form other organisms, so group selection for altruism would be unlikely to override the tendency of each group to quickly lose its altruists through natural selection favoring cheaters. Further, little evidence exists that selection on groups has promoted the evolution of any trait. Finally, other, more plausible evolutionary forces, like direct selection on individuals for reciprocal support, could have made humans prosocial. These reasons explain why only a few biologists, like [David Sloan] Wilson and E. O. Wilson (no relation), advocate group selection as the evolutionary source of cooperation.

The proponents of multilevel selection are too distinguished to dismiss and there is a logic to their argument which is persuasively plausible but the critics are on equally firm footing in the validity of their criticisms.

 My own suspicion is that this might be a debate about definitions and time frames.  That selfish-gene type evolution dominates at the biological level while prosocial group selection type evolution operates at the cultural level.  

Essentially a hardware/software type of argument.  Hardware sets fixed parameters that are hard to evolve over time.  Software capabilities tend to evolve and diversify at a much faster rate than does hardware.

When we look at people, there is their inherent physical attribute endowment which is constrained by biological evolution.  This often predicts their relevant ranking within a group, people with good health, good looks, good looks rising towards the top.  

But their actual productivity is to a significant degree determined by their adherence to values and behaviors inculcated via socio-cultural influences such as class, religion, and family norms.  

In this view, individual performance is both a function of longterm selfish-gene capabilities which are not easily modified, interacting with much shorter term socio-cultural capabilities which are far more malleable and adaptable to near term changing circumstances.