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Ben Finn's avatar

First, when something becomes visible, your killing it would seem a “public good” act which benefits all species, but mainly costs yours. Your killing action takes up your resources, and risks making you visible to be destroyed by others. Unless you think this new visible thing is especially likely to compete with your siblings, relative to other competitors, you’d rather wait and let something else destroy it.

Unless the killing is done by probes which can't (easily) be traced back to you. (Cf governments etc. hiring assassins, often via further intermediaries.) Maybe self-replicating probes, which thus spread far & wide, making them even harder to trace back to you, and not using up your local resources.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

These are all interesting scenarios, however the physical realities, will keep each civilization, safely confined to their home turf. No Beserker dictator, no matter how evil, will plan a blitzkrieg attack on his neighbors, which must be carried out by his distant relatives, after a 3,054 year journey. The natural human instinct to protect oneself, and his close relatives, (over his unrelated fellow citizens), probably loses its appeal, when projected more than 3 or 4 generations. In other words, there are not many parents, who concern themselves, with their future, grand-children's well-being, in 200 years time, even though we all had great..great...grand-parents 200 years ago. Similarly, our, and other civilizations, individual occupants, will feel little incentive to plan events, when they and their relatives, will not benefit for 370 years.

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