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Notes -
Some hard science news, that nevertheless became part of culture wars.
As you probably heard, third recorded interstellar object is on the way. It stands out of sample of three, just like the previous two.
The usual suspects, most prominent Avi Loeb and John Brandenburg of ancient nuclear war on Mars fame sound an alarm to warn from incoming alien invader.
Mainstream science dismisses the concerns and sees the object as ordinary red colored D-type asteroid.
< tinfoil hat> well, what are they supposed to do? </tinfoil hat>
Not that "we" as mankind could do anything if ayys were really here. See just Avi Loeb's proposals.
Nah. I cannot imagine better way to ensure Earth's swift destruction than to introduce aliens to United Nations. Compared to this plan, doing nothing at all is the superior alternative.
Based on a current understanding of physics, the only reason to launch an invasion would be to acquire the population as human capital for empire building- terraforming is at least an understood problem and the dark forest theory is more easily resolved by WMD’s than boots on the ground invasion.
Therefore any potential invaders can be negotiated with, and it’s not worth worrying about.
Somehow I doubt our "elite human capital" is that elite. I'd cross that one off.
Earth still produces plenty of geniuses, and indeed plenty of not-genius tier but highly capable engineers, technicians, etc.
That argument doesn't pass any sort of smell test. Even the wars of conquest and colonization on Earth (like the European Age of Exploration) were typically not motivated in any particular sense by acquisition of human capital, and there the conquerors and the conquered were significantly closer to each other in disposition and in particular capabilities/talent than any presumable spacefaring race would be to us. Instead, it's always acquisition of inanimate resources, or land, or preemptive weakening of a potential enemy. I figure the last one would be by far the most relevant one on a space scale.
If we (or, better: someone less sentimental, like the Victorians, the Saudis or the Chinese) went to Alpha Centauri and discovered a race of sentient insectoids somewhere around the development and intellectual level of Aboriginal Australians at the time of contact (but without aesthetics or ethics that are appealing or recognisable to us), do you actually think we would be integrating them for insectoid capital, as opposed to keeping a few specimens for study and either declaring the place a nature preserve or exterminating them and proceeding to colonise or strip-mine the place?
What are you talking about? Acquiring the civilian population of weaker powers has been a key goal of conquest since ever. The Bible records thé wise men of Israël relocated to act as advisors in Babylon. The Romans were furious when archimedes was slaughtered in the sack of Syracuse. And the British empire used Indian soldiers extensively.
I don't think Indian soldiers count as "human capital" exactly, and either way we are already at the point in the tech tree where meat soldiers are starting to get obsoleted by drones. As for the other two examples, the Archimedes one seems like a fairy tale, and the Bible "record" does not seem particularly compelling either given that it was written by Israelites as part of a larger book singing the praises of their own wise men, so they would have all the motivation to make up a story to make them look good. Compare the wall of modern fiction where audience/author avatars get abducted by foreign cultures and placed in in improbably influential roles (like the waste heap of isekai manga), or older ones such as Marco Polo's fanciful claim about being made a government official by Kublai Khan's court.
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