That rationale of projecting the prisoner’s dilemma onto literally everything is really dangerous. It makes me think of that one episode of Rick and Morty where they’re split between these increasingly fragmented eigenstates and all the Ricks start trying to kill one another because they figure if they don’t the others will kill them first.

If everybody abandons their morality because they’re pretty sure everyone else will do it first if they don’t, we definitely get a worse outcome. Like, okay, even if eventually some like Chinese Bene Gesserit space marines push for military dominance, we’d be better off making some little pocket of life on Earth that isn’t rushing the dystopian options and eventually losing it than just making everything terrible to make sure we own the ruins.