Universal Rights and Social Constructionism

As the prime survival trait of the human species, social constructs present capabilities not attainable through any other means. A social construct is a concept that only exists if two or more people agree it exists (it’s only an idea if held by a single person). You can’t hold a social construct in your hand, or point to it with your finger. It can only be described as a mental concept. That said, social constructionism is one of the prime reasons humans have advanced so far, despite a litany of physical limitations.

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Upcoming Material

Upcoming articles will come under two titles: Universal Rights and Sustainable Governance, and Universal Rights and Self Preservation.

Universal Rights & Unsustainable Social Function

A social entity is an organization as functioning in response to the pressures from a social construct. These include organizations who manufacture products or offer services — public or private — their existence or function can be non-essential to a species of sociality.

If a social entity fails to function sustainably, it is without the universal right to continue said unsustainable function. For an unsustainable social entity to receive continued support from a social construct — defines said social construct as unsustainable — inherently detrimental to the capabilities of a species of sociality.

Evolved Sociality: Viability of Modern Social Constructs

Any species exhibiting sociality is the result of a species adapting to an environment laden with challenges — naturally solved by evolved sociality. Sociality does not develop in response to nothing, magically beneficial to a species’ function in a given environment. Sociality is proof of sustainable function, for without it, no species could survive an environment fraught with challenges — specifically solved by sociality. No less is this function needed to survive, than for a herd of elephants forming a protective circle around their young at the sight of predators.

Species of Sociality: Sustainable Genetic Morality

Is morality a conscious skill, or an inherent trait of sentience? To sight differences draws questions over noble discipline verses a natural instinct. What would define morality as noble, and why revere it with such social admiration? Questions such as these relegate this topic to a subjective concept — philosophically musing and possibly untenable as biological law in humanity. To understand how morality is seen as a biological law, sociality must be addressed.

Universal Rights & Free Speech — a Scientific Process.

Speech is a Universal Right. Without speech, individuals of a society could not communicate with each another. Communication is a fundamental function of a species exhibiting sociality. Without communication, the sole supporting behaviour of sociality simply wouldn’t exist — not unlike an electric grid, or telephone network (without wires, the grid or network cannot exist). Logically, for any species to exhibit sociality is directly qualified as a sustainable function — as a response to the environment that shaped the genetic evolution of said species.

Alone in the Universe: A safe choice?

Open letter to SETI:

There are those within the SETI project who wish to send signals out into space — hoping a reply would make it easier for us to discover life in the universe. I’ve addressed this concept before, however, there are those who fear such an act would invite unwanted visitors from a civilization far more advanced than our own. So the question remains: should we be concerned about distant civilizations looking towards Earth with hungry eyes for our natural resources?

Artificial Intelligence: Synthetic Evolution

As modern society evolves, so does our understanding of our humanity. With the advancement of our abilities forever fuelled by the inherent motivation to expand our potential, we are now questioning the ethics of creating the first artificial intelligence. In that discussion, universal rights will undoubtedly have a place.

Universal Rights & Immigration

Over the coming months, I will be writing examples of how Universal Rights work in the real world. As each social challenge is solved using Universal Rights, the universal aspect will become clear.

To gain perspective into sustainable immigration in modern society, a primer in Universal Rights is needed. Those hearing of Universal Rights may be unfamiliar of the real world applications, much less how it applies to sustainable human activity.

Spacetime

To the average person, time is a liner progression of events. In the classic model, time is the quantitative result of repeated cause & effect at set intervals. More accurately, the progression of time is not a singular motion, but a component of something much larger. When Einstein revealed spacetime to the world, we gained a greater understanding of the reality we exist in. We’ve learned that while time continues from moment to moment, we as observers may not realize that we’re also moving.

In a classic sense this movement is part physical. Sitting still, we may think no movement is apparent. However, while siting still, the earth rotates one revolution every 24 hours. The earth also orbits the sun ~once every year, and our solar system has a galactic year of ~235 million earth years with respect to the centre of our galaxy. Then there’s the movement of our galaxy in the local group, and finally, the groups movement in the Virgo supercluster and so on. We won’t include the expansion of the universe, as that’s a homogenous expansion. Simply put, we’re moving fairly fast, but not fast enough to really notice.

Spacetime is a reference to the bound relationship of space and time, just like the electric field and the magnetic field, you can’t separate the two parts. It may surprise some that spacetime has a finite limit in relativity. This is because spacetime has only two dimensions, not unlike a drawing on paper. Everything in spacetime has both a velocity in space and a velocity in time. The direction in space is irrelevant, as spacetime cares not of the direction you choose to travel. In spacetime, everything travels at the same velocity. The geometry (or path) within spacetime is where we find the interesting parts.

Those sitting still in their living room chairs are moving fairly quickly. Yes, as noted previously, we travel through the galaxy at quite a speed. Yet, nothing compared to the speed we travel through time. Think of a graph where time is set along the X-axis and space is set along the Y-axis. If you drew a horizontal line along the bottom of the X-axis to represent a single year, you might get an idea of just how fast we’re travelling through time and how slow we’re travelling though space. The limit of spacetime is represented by the length of line you drew along the X-axis. This length is unchangeable. If the top of the Y-axis represents the speed of light, and the end of the X-axis represents 1 year, how fast would you have to travel in order to change the angle of the seemingly horizontal line?

It becomes apparent just how much velocity through space is needed before we see a change in time. Basic geometry will tell you that travelling at equal velocities of space and time will place you at 211,986,245 m/s or ~474.2 million miles/hour. That’s fast enough to get you to Mars in 20 minutes. At that velocity, time will have slowed to 70.711% of normal. Of course, you wouldn’t noticed this as you travel. The only thing you might notice is while everyone on earth will know you took only 20 minutes to reach Mars, the voyage for you will have taken a little over 14 minutes. You will have travelled as fast through time as though space. Increasing velocity through space takes away velocity from time, and vice-versa.

If you think 70.711% of the speed of light is fast, it is. At that speed you can get to Pluto in just under 4 hours. Yet, it will still take you 3 years to reach Alpha Centauri — the closest star to us.

For those hoping scientists will invent a time machine, don’t hold your breath. Curved space is only a relative distortion, and all that implies.

A question I asked Neil: “While the universe goes though its homogenous expansion, what effects might this have on spacetime? If we find a way to move our spacetime velocity more towards space (and less towards time), what might we have to consider if space is expanding? Better yet, what if our measurement of the expanding universe is not a measurement of the expanding universe?… if you get what I mean.”

The implication of my last comment was this: What if the universe is not expanding, but instead, time is accelerating? What if dark energy contributes to a compound effect on time — producing an accelerated view of galaxies further away? Our local frame would appear faster than the rate of time when light from distant galaxies began their journey. Therefore, the light would seem slower (red) to us after millions of years of travel.

Are we really seeing a homogenous expansion between galaxies known as Hubble’s Constant? One thing is for sure, spacetime has a limit. Divide its components as you like, but in the end, spacetime is constant. Perhaps our position on the graph of space and time isn’t that clear. With all things relative, perhaps spacetime is slowly shifting away from space, ever closer towards the direction of time.