I don't know what the original title was, but I do know the contents of the article, in which the author makes it abundantly (and if you read everything in that section, repeatedly) clear that he is aware of the usual use of the phrase "destroy the Earth". It is not a "strawman", it is the topic of the essay. If anyone is erecting a strawman, it is those who refuse to deal with the text on its own terms and insist on forcing their personal definitions of various terms onto the text, despite clear, repeated disclaimers, and the obvious fact that the entire idea of the essay is predicated on the author's definition.

Maybe you were just reacting to this title, but this has been linked in a few places and every time it seems this reminder needs to be given, so even if you are now satisfied by the new title, this still needs saying. An author is free to choose their topic and the precise meaning of some of the terms they are using; nothing else makes any sense.

That's like the proposal to achieve AI by simulating a whole human body down to the molecules. It sounds clever to college freshmen, but it really just shows people are ignorant of the orders of magnitude of what they're discussing.

In the context of this article such people would be termed either "wannabes" or "lacking in vision".

Moving Jupiter via fusion candle is vision, RISC is optimization.