Privileging the hypothesis. There could be powerful friendly agents who punish unfriendliness, but unless we figure out how likely they are, the mere possibility isn’t meaningful. There could also be powerful agents that will punish us unless we harm the weak, but merely knowing that this isn’t impossible isn’t a good reason to do so.
Maybe true one-shot prisoner’s dilemmas aren’t really a thing, because of the chance of encountering powerful friendliness.
We have, for practical purposes, an existence proof of powerful friendliness in humans.
Privileging the hypothesis. There could be powerful friendly agents who punish unfriendliness, but unless we figure out how likely they are, the mere possibility isn’t meaningful. There could also be powerful agents that will punish us unless we harm the weak, but merely knowing that this isn’t impossible isn’t a good reason to do so.