#just straight up a cultural superiority complex wrapped in flawed ethics

[maniacalchuckling]

Hey I just want to complain about the prime directive.

The federation really just said "erm, we understand that you would desperately want to know alien life exists, and that doing so would only be beneficial, but you haven't met an arbitrary technological milestone, sorry :/"

Like, I get it's to "protect their culture" and shit, but culture changes. That's what it does. You don't have the right to withhold information from someone because they might stop doing an interesting dance before they build a pot. These are people not interesting social science subjects.