[ironlake]

In the books, each civilization can have a hiding gene and/or an exterminating gene. At the beginning of the story, humanity has neither. The idea is that civilizations without the hiding gene won't last long. So it's not rational for a civilization to become "Space Hitler", there are other options, they can hide.

I found the hypothesis to be convincing in the story. By the time you figure out if a civilization is friendly, they may have advanced to the point where they could destroy you. Everyone has to hide. Not everyone has to exterminate.

Clearly, having discovered no other civilizations in the universe, we don't have enough information, so it's all guesswork and fantasy.

[anonymouskimmer]

Prisoner's dilemma, or even better than that. Cooperation is ignored despite having significant advantages laid out in the likes of Star Trek and Babylon 5.

[SnazzyJeff]

> Prisoner's dilemma

This falls apart pretty rapidly when you move beyond one person—groups of people don't tend to act collectively rationally. Hell, the entire reason "capitalism" is a thing at all is it provides some consensus in the face of byzantine faults even if it fails to represent our collective needs with any accuracy.

[anonymouskimmer]

I'm pretty sure capitalism is a thing because it provides a means of legal ownership and the growth of one's exercise of power through the exploitation of that ownership. Consensus would exist due to the power of the state regardless of the economic system.

[SnazzyJeff]

> Consensus would exist due to the power of the state regardless of the economic system.

What does this mean? Genuinely confused what you think a state is in the modern age if not the infrastructure necessary to support a market.

[anonymouskimmer]

For some reason this comment of yours was dead.

Power drives consensus. Capitalism is just a means to allocate this power within a functioning state. But even in a non-Capitalist state consensus still exists due to allocated power.

Capitalism has uses other than consensus as well.

Ah. I think I was talking past you by hyper focusing on just the "capitalist" and "consensus" parts of what you wrote. I was taking it to mean that there was a special connection between capitalism and consensus, and not just that capitalism is one means by which consensus is created.

[SnazzyJeff]

> Power drives consensus.

Power is able to manipulate consensus, but ultimately it exists despite consensus. Its existence is relative by definition.

> Capitalism has uses other than consensus as well.

False

> Ah. I think I was talking past you by hyper focusing on just the "capitalist" and "consensus" parts of what you wrote. I was taking it to mean that there was a special connection between capitalism and consensus, and not just that capitalism is one means by which consensus is created

There are of course other means of consensus. For whatever reason these means are not available to us now, allegedly.

[labster]

Cooperation is essential to build a society that can reach space. Every spacefaring race should have cooperation genes like us (but also like us they may be occasionally genocidal). One of the reasons for human success is cross-species cooperation, mostly with dogs and horses