Thanks for your input. I appreciate it. I used the analogy of European colonization of the world (and famously the Americas), but this analogy is inefficient, or falls short when I consider your first point. I think none of the colonizing countries had at that stage had a policy or ‘codex’ as you put it to interact with people they encounter on their journeys of exploration and limit any negative impact of that interaction. On the other hand I said in the piece that I wrote that only the most advanced civilizations, far ahead of even the mean, or general space-faring civilizations might have a policy when interacting with “lesser” more primitive sentient beings. So, on the other hand perhaps my European colonization analogy does not break down, because I think in general your second point might be accurate in that it is a winner-takes-all situation out there. The ‘wild west’ scenario as you put and the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” comes to mind.

About signals into space: They (who are ‘they’? Ha-ha), they say that we are here on Earth on the brink of encountering one of these space traversing species. I think this might be because we are making a lot of noise and that we are using and can use nuclear weapons - a lot of noise itself.