One interesting question raised by Professor Loeb’s lecture is whether the discovery of extraterrestrial life would prompt global cooperation or intensify existing geopolitical divisions. In a world already fractured by conflict and distrust, the arrival, or even detection, of intelligent alien life might not unify humanity as often imagined. Instead, it could become a new arena for power struggles. Would nations race to monopolize alien technology for their own advantage, perhaps even attempting to form alliances with alien entities to dominate Earthly rivals? Or would humanity set aside its divisions, realizing the need for planetary solidarity in the face of a vastly more advanced or unknown civilization? One of Loeb’s points was that we may not exist at the center of the universe and may be merely one of many common species. This fundamentally challenges our assumptions about superiority and control. His ideas open the door to even wilder speculations: what if alien civilizations themselves are fractured, with sects, ideologies, or economic systems more complex and unfamiliar than our own? But perhaps most crucially: if aliens ever were to enter the fray, what level of tariffs would President Trump immediately slap on their exports?
These (not the tariff) questions are incredibly difficult to answer because our frameworks for understanding are deeply rooted in human experience. As Loeb emphasizes, our worldview is so Earth-centric and anthropocentric that we struggle to conceptualize what alien life might actually be like, let alone how we would respond to it. We imagine extraterrestrials through the lens of our politics, economics, and religions, but any intelligent species would have developed under entirely different evolutionary and cultural conditions. We may not even recognize their forms of communication, let alone comprehend their intentions. The challenge lies not just in finding aliens but in overcoming the limitations of our imagination enough to seriously engage with what their discovery would mean.