Glenn; this is the classic game theory question. What experiments have shown in these kinds of situations is that people treat each other as they have been treated. I’m an economist by training so I guess my response to you would be to list your assumptions.

And yeah, any alien species we’d have to be super careful about meeting but the idea that we would necessarily end up in a nihilistic fight to the death seems to be an extremely pessimistic view.

It’s extremely entertaining to think about though!