A chilling rationality emerges – one that transforms population reduction from unthinkable atrocity to calculated strategy. Understanding this calculus doesn’t require embracing it; rather, it demands clear-eyed recognition of incentives that will exist when the technological threshold is crossed. The rational calculation becomes startlingly simple: why tolerate billions of competitors when a dramatically smaller population would maximize resource availability and minimize internal and external existential threats?
More troubling still is the self-fulfilling dynamic this creates. Once the technology exists, multiple groups will inevitably pursue it defensively. Consider the cold logic: if one community might obtain means to eliminate competitors, any group wishing to survive must launch a preemptive strike or ally itself with it. Counter-intuitively, this dynamic fosters cooperation rather than competition between rival groups with similar technological capabilities, but against everyone else. As elimination becomes feasible, the wisest strategy becomes combining “no-kill lists” – exclusive, protected populations - rather than risking mutual annihilation through competition. The net result of the mere possibility of selective mass killing guarantees multiple motivated actors pursuing it simultaneously. This mirrors game theory’s darkest predictions, but unlike nuclear deterrence which maintained stalemate through universal undesirability, groups genuinely benefit from population reduction, making restraint far less likely.
The moral restraints normally preventing such calculated elimination depend heavily on mutual dependence. When that dependence dissolves through technological uncoupling, ethical considerations dissolve with it. As with the Sentinelese hostility to outsiders, behavior that is deviant and self-defeating in a cooperative world becomes instrumental to survival.