Whatever we do regarding aliens, we'll still have species incapable of defending themselves for hundreds if not thousand of years.
Setting up hidden but capable defensive installations in their systems seems like a good idea to counter Destroyer visits. Certainly, they wouldn't be enough on their own. But hopefully they can buy time for support and/or evacuation ships to arrive.
[X] Extreme Xeno-Preservationist: The Moderate Xeno-Preservationist stance was fairly similar to its extreme version, with the caveat that it had looser standards for when a civilization was considered mature enough to establish official contact and relations with. The extreme version meanwhile argued that the benchmark for making contact should be set at the development of warp-space technology, under the logic that in the coming centuries the Directorate would likely grow to the point it's economic output outstripped many star systems: the same dilemma they already had was likely to grow exponentially worse.
What?
The contact benchmark should be
warpdrive?
WE wouldn't even have developed warpdrive for who knows how many decades or centuries without the generous aid of the Destroyers. By the time isolated species find that point, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are technologically superior to us in some ways.
This is truly an extreme option, alright.
Yeah, as much as SB/SV loves to fetishise uplift stories a lot of of them ignore the real life instances of that kind of thing going horrible wrong. With the biggest examples being the mass murder and even genocide of countless less advanced/primitive people's by technologically advanced ones throughout history. Then there is the issue of cultures imposing their own values on others to the point of committing cultural genocide and outright erasing a people's identity.
Like it doesn't seem to have occurred to people that even if we do ally with other races if we make it a thing that we think it's alright to get involved in less developed people's lives that they may think it's alright to do the same. Which is an issue when you take into account that they may do things in ways we don't really agree with even if they genuinely think it's for the less developed races own good.
That is pretty much the main thing that a lot of sci fi fans give aliens shit for in sci fi stories. Heck, it's what the Imperium does all the time. Yeah we aren't the Imperium and our allies are likely to be nowhere near as bad but it would probably be a good idea to avoid setting precedents of more advanced races getting too involved with the development of more primitive races.
There are reasons and causes for why contact often goes bad. But throwing everything into one big pot and concluding that genocide of one kind or another is to be expected isn't a reasonable analysis of risk.
Outcomes depend on intent, circumstances and beliefs. Whether or not you see the other as lesser beings to be subordinated/avages whose primitive culture should be replaced with 'civilization' or not makes a pretty big difference. Sure, unintentional harm is a thing, but it shouldn't be thrown in with genocidal intent.
"They may take the wrong lesson from our action."
Ok, but they could also take the wrong lesson from our inaction. Not to mention that there is no reason to think they would turn out better if left to their own devices.
Dragging the imperium out as a case against intervention is pretty far out there.
Like, the imperium also has religion and does bad things because of it, and there is lots of historical precedent in our world of people doing horrible things because of religion. Are we supposed to ditch that on principle? No, because the specifics of what these religions proscribe, what people believe, and how they are integrated into society are really really important for their consequences.
Personally, I'm not sure I'm a fan of more heavy handed intervention. But I want the reasoning for and against to be a bit more specific and applicable to the situation.
