Tim Peake: UK astronaut heads for space station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foale

> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28666-first-official-...

" Despite what you may have heard, Peake is actually the sixth Brit in space. The first was chemist Helen Sharman, who flew to the Russian Mir space station in 1991 as part of Project Juno, a jointly funded mission between a private consortium and Russia. She was followed by the British-born astronauts Michael Foale, Piers Sellers and Nicholas Patrick, who all took US citizenship and flew on NASA missions, and Richard Garriott, a video game developer who went to the ISS as a space tourist. "

I live in the US (NYC), which means that various government agencies think that the life of someone like me is worth around $5M -- that's the price they're willing to spend to save one statistical life when evaluating policies.

Three thousand miles away in California, the same is true.

Go a similar distance the other direction, to Senegal, and the Against Malaria Foundation thinks it can save lives for $3000 per life, with plenty of room for more funding and lives to save.

And of course, those people aren't allowed to move to the US. The patch of land they were born in isn't merely "irrelevant"; it's much worse than that.

How is any of this morally defensible, and how is it wrong to call it out as arbitrary and unfair? It's not even like I know these people in California or share geography with them in any meaningful sense.

You have the strange notion that without nationalism to enforce an identity on myself that naturally there is no way my neighbor and me can live in "peace and harmony". I suggest that I can work with other people just fine, even if I don't share an identity with them. In fact, if you can only work peacefully with people similar to yourself I believe that is discrimination of some form or another. I realize no human is an ideal machine, but any person with empathy really ought to be able to work with women/men/muslims/jews/french/british/german/ginger/blond/tall/short/disabled people without issue - especially if they want to remain employed in the modern world.

Finally, please avoid insulting people who express a different opinion to your own.

I don't speak for lamby, but it might be that what he was regretting is that nationality is essentially the only identity that is popularly used to characterise astronauts. When was the last time an astronaut was described (to take your examples) primarily in terms of their religion, attitude to tech, or preferred literary genre? It doesn't happen.

But from space, national boundaries are invisible. This is part of what causes the so-called "overview effect" [1] that some space travellers report. I don't know, but I suspect that lamby may have been alluding to this.

Three human beings went into space today on expedition 47. What do you know about them, apart from that they are Russian, American, and British? Do you have any other ways to characterise them?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect

It hasn't been very useful to me, though you may have different experiences. I don't care about common history or traditional and cultural memory; the most important factor is that someone can learn it, instead of being forever left out because they drew a different straw in the birth lottery.

>Not to mention, them having a common identity creates peace and harmony within a geographical region and lets them work as a team

This is a way to work in a team, there are others which work regardless of your identity. The peace and harmony immediately comes crashing down when you have someone with a different identity. In fact, thinking that there is some magical peace and harmony that's created in your own group is exactly what makes the illusion crumble; if you convince people that there's peace and harmony within their own group and only when that group is based upon some shared identity, they won't act in harmony when someone else comes along.

It fosters an exclusionary atmosphere.

>Of all your identities, I would argue your geographical one would STILL be the strongest/be benefitting you the most, regardless of how much an irrelevant contrivance you consider it to be.

I don't think you can reliably make this statement to someone who finds that the identity given to them (by birth or through childhood) is in fact a hindrance. Xenophobia is a problem. Your strongest identity is the one that you're most comfortable with - it benefits you the most. It might be geographical identity, but everyone has a geographical identity anyway - it's not as special as other identities - and you can't choose it, either.

>it has just made more people desire the same boundaries (ie, shown how some places are more desirable)

Has it really? I know many people who are happy with the way online gaming, IRC, mailing lists among other things erase national boundaries. It's perhaps the thing I love most about the Internet. You can be together with people - to foster the "human connection".

>Discounting 'the specific patch of ground you were born in' is an incredibly privileged and individualistic way of seeing things.

Howso? And if it is privileged, let whomever experiences it have that privilege, and hope that others can have that same privilege.

>and discounts the fact that we are, after all, humans

We are humans; this is the most important thing. It's not discounting humanity - it's reinforcing it. Before I get called a speciesist, I would be happy to extend it to "we are, after all, life forms". Though that doesn't make us feel as special.

We get attached to the labels and indenties that make us feel the most special - I don't think there is any place for this, especially in a much more communicative world. You can feel as special as you want, but I think it is problematic when you start saying "my special thing is better than yours". And I can't imagine a situation where that doesn't crop up.

It seems as though you are providing an "excuse" for our nature; you seem to have identified that our identities are based upon a wrong view of the world - that is, the wrong view that we are special snowflakes.

I don't think it's an innate human thing to do this - and if it is, why can't we overcome it? Why not abandon this wrong view, and encourage others to do it? You don't have to go to space to do it, my human friend.

Especially when Britain already has pretty interesting space projects conceived and based in Britain, supported by our taxes and employing mostly Britons...