Stephen Baxter has a similar thread in a lot of his writing. A unifying purpose makes us one tribe. Basing it on a scientific target means we avoid most of the headaches and cruft that other cultural transcription and binding agents suffer.
Why not target intelligence surviving the heat death of the universe?
Personally I think COVID disproved this hypothesis. The part of the movie where the aliens land and attack us all, regardless of identity, did happen. The unifying did not.
I think we have to find a way to peacefully and productively coexist as a multiplicity of tribes.
Hmm, that is interesting, but I think about this like, the failure to make the vaccine open source or generally available, the polarization around masks and every COVID measure, and how we are still not rallying around existential problems like climate.
But perhaps this is a United States bias on my part?
Why not target intelligence surviving the heat death of the universe?