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A comment on The Theory of Interstellar Trade. Parent comment

Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by njarboe on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @03:07AM (#17547889)
The original is more rare than a large number of perfect copies. If the aliens have had a long time to interact with people on Earth, there will be some people they "trust" more than others. The most trusted humans will be the ones who the aliens will trust to determine which artifacts are "original" and which ones are copies. The aliens will value the original, more rare, art work higher than the identical copies that less trusted people send. Similar to how the art world works today.

This original and perfect copy stuff is mostly about status and the monkey-human desire to get to the top of hierarchies. Aliens might not care about that, but they might not care about anything we have.

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Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by lisper on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @03:20AM (#17547936)
> If the aliens have had a long time to interact with people on Earth, there will be some people they "trust" more than others.

And how exactly will that trust be built up? Keep in mind that it takes 8 years to do one round-trip communication to the closest star. The closest inhabited star will almost certainly take longer than a human lifetime to complete a round-trip.

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