Editing Haidt 2012 (section)

===A fast herd of deer?===

*In Adaptation and Natural Selection (1996), George Williams told biologists how to think clearly about adaptation. He viewed natural selection as a design process, and rejected the idea that there is a conscious or intelligent designer. 

*Williams noted that adaptation at a level always implies a selection process operating at that level, and he warned readers not look to higher levels (such as groups) when selection effects at lower levels (such as individuals) can fully explain the trait.

*Per Williams, to force ourselves up to a group-level analysis, we would need to find behavioral mechanisms whose goal or function was clearly the protection of the group, rather than the individual. 

*While Williams did say that group selection was possible in theory, he devoted most of his book to proving his thesis that “group-related adaptations do not in fact exist”.