Either way though, there would seem to be a prisoner's dilemma of sorts with regards to that. I'm not sure about this, but let's say we could do unto the Babyeaters without them being able to do unto us, with regards to altering them (even against their will) for the sake of our values. Wouldn't that sort of be a form of Prisoner's Dilemma with regards to, say, other species with different values than us and more powerful than us that could do the same to us? Wouldn't the same metarationality results hold? I'm not entirely sure about this, but..

I'm inclined to think so, which is one reason I wasn't in favor of going to war on the Babyeaters: what if the next species who doesn't share our values is stronger than us, how would I have them deal with us? what sort of universe do we want to live in?

(Another reason being that I'm highly skeptical of victory in anything other than a bloody war of total extermination. Consider analogous situations in real life where atrocities are being committed in other countries, e.g. female circumcision in Africa; we typically don't go to war over them, and for good reason.)

Good story! It's not often you see aliens who aren't just humans in silly make up. I particularly liked the exchange between the Confessor and the Kiritsugu.