TST Trainer

Three Tidbit Stories

Topic:
Social Constructs
Timeless ideas at the intersections of science, philosophy, critical thinking, and history.

Social Constructs.

3 random tidbit stories in about 3 minutes.

1.

Social Constructs FAQ.

Time entropy is the arrow of time – the observation that events unfold in one direction. Entropy tends to increase. A hot cup of coffee cools. Eggs crack; they do not uncrack. People are born, live, and die; not the other way around. Cause comes before effect, and memory points backward, not forward.

Now add quantum mechanics.

In the early 1900s, physicists discovered that matter does not behave like simple little bullets. Instead, they sometimes act like particles and sometimes like waves. In 1927, experiments confirmed this strange wavicle behavior. The conclusion was that objects exist in a spread of possible states until measured.

In 1935, Schrödinger entered the story with his imagined cat in a box, tied to a quantum event. According to the strange math, before anyone looks, the cat appears to be both alive and dead in a kind of unresolved possibility. Schrödinger meant this as a warning: if all this is taken too simply, it leads to absurd-sounding conclusions.

The response was essentially: yes, it is weird. And yes, it is happening.

Then, in 1957, Hugh Everett offered the Many Worlds interpretation. Maybe the universe does not collapse into one result. Maybe all possible outcomes continue, each in its own branch of reality. In one branch, the cat lives. In another, it dies. Forward-only time entropy implies this is possible. Some even say likely.

Time entropy is an empirical truth. We see the arrow of time everywhere. But the Many Worlds interpretation is speculative and falls into the irrational category. It is one possible way to explain what quantum theory means underneath the math.

 


That Social Constructs FAQ, 

was first published on TST 2 weeks ago.

2.

Social Constructs Story.

Emerged 12.5 to 12 mya, extinct 8.5 to 7 mya.
Complex Brains; Long-Term Memory; Complex Sentience; Self-aware; Complex EI.

As various great ape species fill niche areas around the globe, branches emerge. The last common ancestor of all known great apes, including humans, lived about 16.5 mya. That branch leads to modern orangatans, which split off again about 12.5 mya. The last known split of the modern orangatan was about 400,000 years ago.

Orangutan ancestor: After the Great Apes LCA, orangutans evolved in Asia. The genus Sivapithecus represents early orangutans. An extinct species of the great apes, they  lived in the Indian subcontinent from around 12 to about 8 million years ago. It is considered a close relative of the orangutan lineage and shares many similarities with modern orangutans, including a similar skull shape and dental structure. Sivapithecus indicus had a more advanced brain than earlier great apes, and its face was likely more protruding and snout-like, similar to modern orangutans. Its discovery in the Siwalik Hills of India and Pakistan has provided important insights into the evolution of the great ape lineage in Asia, and it is thought to have played a key role in the origins of the orangutan genus, Pongo.

 


That Social Constructs Story, 

was first published on TST 2 years ago.

3.

Social Constructs FAQ.

No, not as a core term. TST does not specifically adopt “existential givens,” or “facticity” as formal vocabulary. Those ideas are useful historical bridges, especially through Sartre and existentialism.

Existential givens usually refer to the facts you are born into or cannot simply wish away: your body, birthplace, family, time period, biology, mortality, and social conditions. Sartre called this kind of thing facticity. These are not choices, but they shape the field in which choices happen. You may feel free to drink water or not, but if you stop drinking water, you stop living. TST uses the common word circumstances, as in your birth circumstances, current circumstances, and upcoming circumstances.

TST keeps the useful insight but avoids making “givens” a separate core term. In TST, a person exists in a current state, with properties and relations already in place. Those conditions create constraints. Within those constraints, some potentials remain open and others are impossible. A human baby can become an adult human, but not a tiger.

So TST frames this topic through choice and constraint. You do not choose the full starting point of your life, but you do make choices from within it. Those choices actualize some potentials and close off others. Your life is not unlimited freedom, and it is not total determinism. It is a lived path through reality’s constraints.

 


That Social Constructs FAQ, 

was first published on TST 1 week ago.

The end. Refresh for another set.

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