We've heard this sort of thing before, of course - from evolutionary biologists, for instance, who claim that natural selection favours altruistic behaviour, since acting benevolently towards other people is a way of securing our genetic posterity.
To say that kin selection interprets altruistic behaviour as a strategy designed by 'selfish' genes to aid their propagation is not wrong; but it is just another way of saying that a Darwinian explanation for the evolution of altruism has been found.
Parthenogenetically reproducing animals that form groups of clone-mates such as aphids (Hemiptera: Aphididae) [ 23, 24] provide the ideal system to test kin-selection of altruistic behaviours used against predators or insect parasitoids.
But kin selection theory explains altruistic behaviour as a clever strategy devised by selfish genes as a way of increasing their representation in the gene-pool, at the expense of other genes.
Group selection can support altruistic giving to nonkin as an evolutionarily stable strategy if individuals can be excluded from the group [10] [12].
From yet another perspective, altruism will be favored by natural selection if carriers of altruistic genotypes are sufficiently overcompensated for their altruistic sacrifice by benefits they receive from others.
All of the other theories for explaining the evolution of cooperative and altruistic social behaviors, such as kin selection, reciprocity, and selfish gene theory, were explicitly developed as alternatives to group selection.
Some of this altruistic behaviour is explained by kin selection.
Though an altruistic behaviour which spreads by kin selection reduces the organism's personal fitness (by definition), it increases what Hamilton called the organism's inclusive fitness.
Some, such as the UN, have advanced altruistic interests, others have advanced group selection based on selfish interests of wealth, power, greed, and consumption, or ethnic, creedal or class interests.
