>I think humans have learned not to cheat - for the most part - because at the most basic level cheating reduces the group's overall survival rate.
I'm pretty sure that our anti-cheating behaviors are mostly instinctive responses, rather than something humans learned. We have an emotional concept of "fairness" that causes us to punish cheaters. There's also no need to invoke group selection to explain this (which is good, because group selection has been pretty thoroughly falsified). Game theory gives us perfectly adequate explanations in terms of individual self-interest for why cheater-punishment is an advantageous behavior.
I am not sure why you think group selection has been thoroughly falsified. From what I've seen on wikipedia and elsewhere, there's simply a strong bias against it being right, and many people react vocally and vehemently, suppressing research of group selection. For example, E. O. Wilson writes a book and all of a sudden he gets a barrage of angry correspondence and rebuttals.
I would say stuff like that discourages exploration in science, and pushes an echo-chamber agenda.
To me it's rather clear that groups dominate individuals. Let's look at the level of groups of complete organisms. The individual is dominated from early childhood and is taught learned behaviors which may actually impede its reproductive success. For example, non-alpha-males in many species simply don't reproduce. That may be ascribed to kin selection, but the mechanism is not kin-related: if a wolf is adopted, the same mechanism applies.
In humans this can be summed up by one word: CULTURE. All the morality, etc. is taught from a young age, and the kids are dominated by the culture, and as they grow up they don't think of doing it any other way. If the culture told you that you can't have more than one wife, then that's what most men will approximately end up with. The man isn't going to go out and get a harem because modern society has basically trained this man that a shitload of problems await him should he try to do it. In other societies, however, the harem is fine.
So basically, the individual behavior is dominated by the group. Selection is a byproduct of that. In men, it typically selects for those traits which the most prolific (reproductively) men possessed. Genghis Khan is one of the ultimate examples.
You're right that "group selection" doesn't exist; but our "instincts" have themselves evolved into what they are, for a reason? Therefore, "not cheating" must bring a benefit to the individual (or be correlated with some other behavior which itself brings a benefit). The question is: what is that benefit?
It would seem that group selection could be possible, depending upon time constants in the equation. E.g. if the group benefit accrued faster than the individual benefit.
Furthermore look at religeon, not a lot of benefit to the individual but the cohesive group survival is improved. Lots of cultural examples.
Heck, even look at cells cooperating to make an organism - thats group selection at the most basic.
>Furthermore look at religeon, not a lot of benefit to the individual but the cohesive group survival is improved.
There is a very strong individual pressure to conform to your tribe. Humans are extremely vulnerable on their own, but benefit hugely from being in a group. It is therefore of paramount importance for an individual to avoid being outcast from the group. I think it is likely that religion is more or less the name we give to the feedback loop that causes tribal conformation pressure to override rational analysis in an individual's belief selection process.
> Heck, even look at cells cooperating to make an organism - thats group selection at the most basic.
No no, that is kin selection in its most extreme form. Kin selection is very strongly backed by evidence, and differs from group selection in that the individuals have an above average statistical overlap in their genomes. For example, a brother and sister have an average of 50% shared genes, so genes that promote sibling cooperation can propagate more effectively than their complementary alleles, even if that cooperation causes some reduction in survival of the individual.
In the case of cells comprising an organism, the overlap in genetic material is 100% (excluding anomalies like mutation and HGT), so we see enormous amounts of individual cell sacrifice which prove advantageous in preserving those cells' genes by benefiting the other cells in the organism.
Groups that find themselves in the same area become kin a few generations later.
So I don't see why kin selection must be the sole mechanism to explain all kinds of group selection. The group dominates the individual by indoctrination from a young age, as well as by force. You can refer to all this as "culture". The group is smart enough to threaten the individual with things that the individual cares about, and the individual has evolved to be receptive to such correction by the group, and learn to stop doing something, even if it would give them a better reproductive fitness.
It just so happens that groups which live together start becoming genetically related down the line. But the mechanism that acts isn't kin selection.
I'm pretty sure that our anti-cheating behaviors are mostly instinctive responses, rather than something humans learned. We have an emotional concept of "fairness" that causes us to punish cheaters. There's also no need to invoke group selection to explain this (which is good, because group selection has been pretty thoroughly falsified). Game theory gives us perfectly adequate explanations in terms of individual self-interest for why cheater-punishment is an advantageous behavior.