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There would without question at least be debate over whether we should do that, and that's really my original point. It seems highly, highly unlikely that alien societies would all come to this same conclusion, unless you're willing to assume they all think fairly uniformly -- but we would be a clear exception to that, and so we've come full circle.

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> It seems highly, highly unlikely that alien societies would all come to this same conclusion

The idea isn't that they all come to the conclusion, but that the ones that it is game-theoretically optimal and those that fail to do so (as well as some that do not) are destroyed by the ones that do.

The MAD doctrine is an evidence in favor of us thinking along the game-theoretic rules in such scenarios, and the beauty of Dark Forest theory is that it essentially follows via game theory straight from its axioms.

The way I see it, it's similar to efficient market hypothesis. That is, as long as the axioms are reasonably met, you'd expect the system to reach and stay in the determined state over time. Incidentally, in the books both humans and Trisolarians are examples of local, temporary deviation from rules of Dark Forest. Spoiler alert: it ends up badly for both, and the Dark Forest asserts itself over time.

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