Intelligence is a freak of nature. An intelligent species can actually prosper by learning from the "outsider" (imagine how evolution might work if a lion could learn how to run faster from an antelope, or how to camouflage itself in the grass with stripes from the tiger.) An intelligence species thrives on diversity and "the different."

But that biological xenophobia is still under there.

The image of the lion learning to run faster from the antelope, etc., is vivid and imaginative. Never heard it put that way before.

Just as an aside, I also laughed when I said to myself "And if Tom applied that philosophy to politics he'd be a Liberal!". But I digress...

Humans practice an intraspecies version of that kind of intelligence when those who embrace diversity learn from other cultures, weakly analogous to crossing a species line for knowledge. A good (and I hope non-controversial) example is how we learn from native and indigenous medicine about drugs and techniques that have been field-tested for centuries, and work even if they weren't created as an exercize of intellect in a shining laboratory. Different strokes for different folks, and sometimes you find that a stroke that's good for somebody else is good for you too.

To get back to Brin's concern, I agree that "Universal Altruism" is too soppy a concept to take seriously, but pragmatism is still speculative. I.e., "another species using the same resources is an enemy" may be only situationally true. At one end of the spectrum, as with interstellar trade, coveting somebody else's resources may simply not be economically feasible, and it's forever an unrequited hunger. At the other extreme, envisioning an alien society wielding vast energies and capable of, if not actual transmutation, cheap synthesis (e.g. nanotech), resources may be a nonissue. The greatest threat may come from another species that's at nearly the same level we are, in which we're speculating about unlimited energy and matter and computational power, but we're not there yet, and still think that atoms are the most important feature of the universe.