It is a ruthless, unforgiving kind of process, with the losers almost always headed for extinction. Unlike Darwin's natural selection it applies primarily to members of our own species. All that we know about human history, from the beginning of the Neolithic on, can be viewed as a playing-out of this form of selection. As a process, it can be as ruthless as biological selection, with the losers being wiped out. But this need not be the case, and indeed usually is not the case.
Cultural selection operates directly to produce changes in the society as a whole.
Since it is based on what is learned, knowledge gained in one generation can be readily passed on to the next, as well as to other social groups. The result is an evolutionary process that is much faster than natural selection based on accumulated genetic variations. It took millions of years for our remote ancestors to evolve from hominid precursors into our own species. By contrast, it has only taken a few thousand for us to emerge from caves and produce the relatively complex material and esthetic culture we enjoy today. During this latter period there has been no perceptible evolution in the strict genetic sense.