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Genuine question: why is it unethical? It's a trade. If it were not deemed a worthwhile trade by either party, they're free to reject the offer. If an alien ap
by cnity 6y ago
Genuine question: why is it unethical? It's a trade. If it were not deemed a worthwhile trade by either party, they're free to reject the offer.
If an alien appeared before me and offered me some crazy never-before-seen four dimensional shapeshifting object in exchange for a bag of coffee, I'd accept it. Was I taken advantage of? I'd be the envy of my friends, for one.
Clarifying edit: I believe the Manhattan example to be unethical, but probably not the alien example. The reason I think so is because I highly doubt (given colonial history in North America) that the trade terms were particularly clear or even that the decision was theirs to make.
Rambling a bit, but here's another edit. The Manhattan trade sounds particularly fishy to me. Imagine that the alien was offering you a shiny 4D object in exchange _for your house_. That would be so ridiculously unwise that I can't really accept that the residents of Manhattan island thought it a good deal.
- rz2k 6y agoAnd, what if they had demonstrated their cool raygun to you before offering to trade the 4d trinket for your house? Maybe you can at least trade the trinket for a smaller house in a worse school district, and that would be preferable to the indirect possibility of being disintegrated. On the other hand the trinket might really be more valuable than your house as exposure to some technology that doesn't exist in the economy where you live. Or, trading coffee was equivalent to smuggling silkworms out of China. Or, you sold them the Brooklyn Bridge rather than coffee or your house.
- cnity 6y agoThis moves the goalposts though. Before the ethical question was whether or not it is ethical to trade items with unknown value to a less advanced group. Now it's whether it is ethical to do so under threat of violence (obviously unethical).