Crowded Galaxy?

https://botsfordism.substack.com/p/the-crowded-galaxy

I just skimmed this. Interesting.

I can imagine it turns out that advanced life (I doubt it will be individuals in sense we are used to, so I am reluctant to call it “civilization”) isn’t violent.

But I am skeptical of the theory that enforcement such as a group upholding a law, or mutually assured destruction, is plausible. I know that game theory on this kind of thing is very complex and I am far from an expert. But it seems to be an unstable equilibrium. Certainly it seems difficult to imagine that an entire galaxy could come into it more or less all at once. And if that doesn’t happen, then it seems like it would be taken advantage of.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. But it doesn’t seem like likely. It seems likely that due to entropy, destruction is always cheaper than defense. And that any system that instead of relying on defense relies upon mutually assured, destruction is not stable with many players for long periods of time.