[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.

[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