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The gap between us and interstellar capable aliens is like gap between us and insects, and we usually do not go on long trips just to stomp on bugs.
Is there any rational motive for alien invasion? Usual science fiction tropes: "they want our water/women/fresh meat" are ludicrous, but there is a possibility.
Terrestrial planets are big chunks of iron, nickel and other metals, conveniently gathered near stars. If you want to build space megastructures, dismantling these planets is the most economic way to get material.
Yes, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Earth is bulldozed in order to build hyperspace bypass is the most accurate depiction of alien invasion.
About non economic motives, motive understandable to us would be pure scientific curiosity ... and religion.
In science fiction, common trope is scientific, rational and logical aliens laughing at Earthling primitive superstitions.
(less known Christian science fiction countertrope is scientific, rational and logical aliens who find out that Christianity is true, become Christian and laugh at atheists.)
Aliens coming to preach their religion (whether peacefully or at blaster point) is something, AFAIK, not done in science fiction (except as slapstick comedy).
"Have you embraced Great Green !Z'hqw':$*>#q?x as your lord and savior?"
Simply seizing as many resources as possible is an entirely rational decision. If grabby civilizations outcompete nongrabby ones, then those are the ones we'd expect to proliferate in the universe. Even if a civilization is internally nongrabby, if they encounter a grabby one, they're likely to resort to grabbiness as a survival mechanism. (This is why humans should be grabby preemptively; there can never be any kind of effective galactic UN.)
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It doesn't take much effort for a civilization higher on the scale from us to send a kinetic kill vehicle.
Indeed, the idea of an interstellar invasion is ridiculous. Preemptive extermination of all other intelligences, however, makes a disturbing amount of sense from a game theoretic perspective.
Yep. I can think of possible ways around it, but when the failure mode/Schelling point is "They destroy us immediately and completely" I'd guess most Civs will end up being defectors.
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Uh, point in of fact, I ABSOLUTELY go out of my way to kill ant colonies that pop up in my lawn, and I do so using more 'sophisticated' methods than stomping them.
And if I were worried about the ants teching up enough to pose a danger to me and my dog, I'd be even more vigilant about it.
I'm thinking a relativistic kill missile is more likely. But on the offchance they want to preserve the planet mostly intact, they just have to set us back to the bronze age or so.
I've been watching Isaac Arthur videos for like 10 years now, so I have seen a lot of 'imaginable' if not plausible scenarios for how Alien invasions could play out.
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The obvious answer is wanting human capital. Population is the most valuable resource on earth and it’s probably the most valuable resource in space too.
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The three body problems idea that aliens would want to destroy other intelligent civilization because of the potential for explosive technological growth on galactic timescales seems to make a lot of sense as a motive for someone to release death probes targeting less developed species to their immediate neighborhood.
Or Von Neumann probes that were launched from so far away that there was no intelligent life on the planet at the time they were originally launched.
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