Uhhh. Is that a solution to problems on Earth? Or avoiding the global catastrophe that is the lack of alien sex? So maybe.

a.k.a. The Kirk hypothesis.

Holding out for Ice Planet Barbarians.

Space Biden: “We will fight Xenu to the last earthling.”

Space John Bolton: “WE HAVE TO NUKE YAKUB! JUST LET ME NUKE YAKUB!”

I thought of more "paperwork" tasks at first. ET but he's really into making sure your Space Tax forms are 100% correct. You didn't forget to get a permit for that Ion Cannon did you?

Me too, I think it's very interesting to think about 'What If?' bigger picture scenarios and what they say about our current priorities and thought processes.

For leftist political theory I suppose it would so wildly depend on the nature of the intelligence. Their history would certainly at least give serious ideas as to what may be a more ideal end-results and revolutionary processes than we're currently conceiving.

Ultimately, I think leftist thought might be the most immune to the culture thought of aliens deciding to show themselves (or us finding them). Liberals would crash the market instantly and turn on each other on an international level (Every one of them would want THEIR nation to be first contact) and fascists would use it to justify a one world fascist government. Religious but philosophically dead freaks would break down mentally (IE most american christians simply are not ready for the idea of intelligent life off world).

Aliens don't inherently mean anything to leftist ideas. Sure a overall "good" future leftist government(s) could botch contact real bad. But if Lenin knew there were little green men 10 million light years away that couldn't even talk to us, would it have changed anything?

Ultimately, aliens existing doesn't mean anything to the material conditions on earth, unless they can directly effect us (IE, give us tech, destroy us, etc etc). Hell even if we learned that the aliens were Space Hitler, it still wouldn't mean much. It'd be concerning, and liberals and fash would use it to say we should follow their lead, but it'd be pretty irrelevant to humans by itself (unless they're in orbit but that'd be another concern).

It is also plausible that nearby ETI simply have no desire to communicate with us ... Perhaps ETI actually do inhabit nearby star systems and detect our radio leakage ... They may be unimpressed with the quality of our broadcasts

"Picking up the Earth scans now.."

"New directive: Contain the s"

They do explore the Zoo hypothesis in the paper. I don't personally think it's very likely, but it's possible.

Earth is a laboratory. Every few million years the galactic powers that be accept a new grant proposal from an alien postdoc. That lucky researcher then gets exclusive rights to transform the planet for their experiment. The first such experiment was the Cambrian Explosion. The dinosaurs were another. Extinction events are when they wipe the planet for the next researcher.

The latest experiment got a little out of hand when the apes invented nuclear weapons and risked irradiating the whole laboratory.

There's still some weird implications and assumptions though. Either galactic civilization must not be highly developed b/c we'd notice all the megastructures, or they put a planetarium around our solar system (paper mentions this). But how the hell would that work? The answer is just indistinguishable from magic. Same thing with hiding infrared emissions.

For sure a scary and possible thing. If we had that kind of benevolent contact we'd have to put faith in the aliens to understand that America is just.. America, and we're still a diverse world.

In regards to the western viewpoint, I think perhaps that's what I appreciate most about this paper - it totally considers a large range of outcomes, and actually does the same, criticising those that do like you say and consider only a very narrow possible window of existence.

many discussions of this question assume that contact will follow a particular scenario that derives from the hopes and fears of the author.

Unfortunately, .. previous work tends to be quite narrow in the sense of only considering one or a small number of possible contact outcomes. There appears to be a tendency to jump to conclusions on a matter which remains highly uncertain and for which a broad range of outcomes are within the realm of possibility

we have reason to believe that a sustainable ETI is less likely to be harmful than an unsustainable, exponentially expansive ETI.

ie if your modus operandi was exploit everything to the max like a capitalist, you wouldn't get very far in space.