Though I find cheating/conflict theoretically fun to think about, I strongly resonate with this. To me it feels like a much harder problem to study is the reduction in (eff.) pop. size during an ETI, causing a dramatic increase in the strength of stochasticity in determining evolutionary outcomes.
Shikhara Bhat
Cheating as the boogeyman of evolutionary transitions in individuality has always been overblown- it’s trivially and durably solved.
There are harder problems in ETIs that have received much less attention (I’d argue because of our focus on conflict).
