> Because pointing out that wars in the history of planet earth have irrational causes is a long way away from explaining why an interstellar actor should attac

> Because pointing out that wars in the history of planet earth have irrational causes is a long way away from explaining why an interstellar actor should attack whatever it sees. I'm not explaining why they'd want to or wouldn't want to: I'm suggesting that it doesn't make sense to simply default assume they won't be hostile because we can't imagine reasons why they'd want to attack. I'm picking the example of Russia/Ukraine because it's the most recent conflict example that I can think of where the aggressor's published reasons for attacking - at least to many observers - don't seem to stand up to rational scrutiny. You can have a debate about whether that's correct or not, and different people will have differing perspectives. The point is that aggressors can be aggressive for reasons that don't make sense or seem rational to others. Within the context of this conversation I am not looking to take a position on Russia/Ukraine: it's simply an example that most people will be aware of. Perhaps too current though to avoid an off-topic argument. I explicitly didn't say anything about "all offensive wars" in general. Your narrow reading is, from what you've said here, correct and I wasn't trying to make a larger point beyond suggesting that we don't have much of a basis to assume beings from another world will or won't be hostile. If I were trying to make a larger point I would have stated it explicitly. One of my pet peeves with online discussion is a culture of implication (i.e., people choosing not to speak plainly) that leads, in many cases, to other comments being overread/overinterpreted when they were never intended to be. Hence, I would have chosen to make the wider point explicit rather than leave it to chance, but it seems like I wasn't clear enough in any case, for which I apologise.