Hypothetical situation for you /sci/

You can increase your intelligence by altering your brains structure. Lets call it eva.

You can achieve an increased level of eva by attacking and killing people for their resources but doing so carries high risk.

While in conflict you can reduce attacks on yourself by torturing people. Would you accept torturing people (amputation, cooking them alive and so forth for hundreds of billions of years)?

Alternatively you can cooperate together with people and accept a similar level of eva to everyone else and it has no risk.

What would you do?