The only way to make progress off into the infinite future, is to have this vision of knowledge that pope had. That you are freely able to explore the space of ideas and falsify assumptions. You will have a society which values creativity as an end in itself. When we encounter the aliens, we should expect not that they're going to be immoral bastards that are going to wang to take over our resources. But the opposite,. They're going to look at us and think what primitive savages we are. And by the way, we don't have to worry about their stealing our resources. That's not like theyr gon ah. There's a planet full of coal and water