Give em The Harkness Test
Does that mean there could be species which humans want to fuck, but which would not consider humans intelligent enough to give proper consent?
Theoretically, yeah. There are tool using species right here on this planet that pass a lot of tests about self awareness, but we’re an order of magnitude more intelligent than a bonobo (well, mostly) and shouldn’t be banging them. I purposely used a species that has recreational sex as an example here.
If there were an intergalactic species that saw us as little more than self aware tool users, that would be up to their morals.
I think that as long as we pass this test from their perspective then it’s fine
We have to convey the 3 check boxes to one another.
It doesn’t matter who is more advanced as long as both species can answer yes to all 3 questions
Either you’re smart enough to understand the concept of consent or you aren’t. Even if there is a sliding scale of intelligence of creatures (I have some issues with the concept of intelligence as a thing that can reasonably be objectively measured, but we can put that aside for now), whether you’re intelligent enough to understand what you will be doing and what will be done to you and make an informed decision about whether you want to do it seems a pretty binary thing, and largely independent of your intelligence in other contexts (e.g. ability to use tools).
You could make the argument that alien sex might be complicated enough for whatever reason that that the aliens would argue that humans couldn’t meaningfully understand everything that was being done to them and thus could not, by definition, give informed consent, but at least from my experience, humans seem pretty on board with things they don’t fully understand. Whether it’s ethical to fuck someone who has admitted that they don’t know anything about what you’re going to do to them, is aware they may be harmed by it, and wants to do it anyway is another question.
Besides, all we’d need is for one human to fuck one alien for science to know whether or not it was safe.
What if it turns out that all sex has unforeseen consequences that human beings are incapable of understanding? A lot of cultures ascribe spiritual and metaphysical values to sex. What if aliens have an empirical proof that sex affects metaphysics in a way too complex for any human mind to conceive of?
I don’t think so… Intelligence isn’t required for consent, it’s informed willingness in the absence of coercion or manipulation. The other factor is the likelihood of harm - I think that covers the full ethics of what beings you can ethically fuck
There’s a few ways to look at it
One of my parent’s dogs once had sex with a handyman’s foot to completion… By the time he realized what was happening it was over, and the dog wasn’t very bothered. The guy was also very nice about it, but I bet he stopped wearing sandals to jobs
What if he was into it? It’s not like the dog would care… He clearly knew what he was doing. If we’re just horny dogs humping their feet, it’s not like they’re doing anything wrong by not kicking us off
It also reminds me of a YouTube skit where an 18 year old boy goes to an adoption agency to find a 16 year old girl to adopt, with clear implications. It’s a dark joke, but I think it lines up with this nicely
Let’s say there’s an alien species far more advanced than us. We’re too dumb to even understand the basics of their technology, so to them we’re basically pets - they can keep us around, but we’re at their mercy. Now, there’s an issue - a human could believe, even falsely, that we have to have sex with them or there will be consequences. We could even believe it’s expected of us - and that’s not coercive
Now let’s say that same species came to Earth, guaranteed the health and happiness if every human, and made tinder for humans who want to have sex with an alien. In that case, if you handle it correctly, you can minimize or eliminate coercion from the act
Maybe the aliens don’t even have sex… Maybe they just think humans are cute, and they enjoy making us feel good the way we enjoy petting animals
I don’t think intelligence plays into any of this - consent isn’t about intelligence at all. It’s about willingness in an uncorrupted state
There’s also the card game Consentacle
A few years later:
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations. And have sex with them.
Kirk mostly used seduction as a tool; he fucked women because it was expedient. Riker did it just because he could.
Original for those who are frustrated by a phone screenshot of a fuzzy version on Facebook
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-2
Bonus panel:
!spoiler !<
Obviously Earth has passed the test.
They were given a task, found a group for whom the task would be ideal in both their willingness and ability to do it, and presented this group to the task giver. They did not force a slave class, they didn’t do a lottery, they didn’t see it as a chance to get rid of undesirables, they just sent people who legitimately wanted to go.
There was no victim, thus there was no crime.
If these aliens can’t tell, they’re morons who clearly didn’t think it through.
If these aliens can’t tell, they’re morons who clearly didn’t think it through.
There’s a popular phrase:“breeding like rabbits”. We view rabbits like some sex crazed breeding machines, like all they do is fuck. What if we’re the galactic rabbits and the other galactic civilizations aren’t trying to fuck everything that moves? Maybe for them kinks aren’t a thing and as such their test makes sense because you can’t prepare for something you can’t imagine (or believe to be impossible).
Imagine you want to prank an alien by putting a bucket on top of the door. When the alien walks in the bucket falls on them. Brilliant, except the alien doesn’t move the door because it phases through the door. Are you stupid for making a prank that expects the victim to be solid? Or did you just make the prank based on the knowledge you have, which includes knowing you can’t just phase through things.
The aliens weren’t dumb. Maybe they did think in through and they thought it would be impossible to be intelligent being to want to fuck extraterrestrials.
It’s weird… I feel like any civilisation worth joining the galactic federation would have no issues finding volunteers to save their civilisation anyway (though maybe not 14 minutes…)
As an individual, when you’re presented with the choice of giving up yourself for the rest of mankind, don’t you think 10 minutes (minus the time it takes to receive the call) is a bit tight to think about it?
You underestimate the number of us who would fuck off the earth and leave our current boring lonely miserable unfulfilling lives in a second.