Firstly, is reframing of free speech to be that which matches the law. To make such a sweeping? statement is open to such broad interpretation is to be useless. Is this particular state law, Or more broadly constitutional law? Or is he referring to some sort of moral law which we share. Ultimately this raises the issues of US hegemonic view that constantly permits these arguments. I’m certain that the Elon’s free speech in the US would go down very different in areas of Europe or Asia. Free Speech is not culturally agnostic such that its potential harm is separated from the context it is in.

This brings me to my second issue, the reference to censorship that goes beyond the law. By pegging his non definition to law it raises a significant question around the censorship he would then support. Take the context of the US for example, which I presume is the law he his referring too. The patriotic act passed in 2001 by the US senate is legal act which allows the US and its institution to have oversight on business records and conducting roving wiretaps to name but a few provisions. Theses powers were used to target suspected terrorists and limit any further attacks by gaining further intelligence. While the patriot act has been modified over the years with a rolling back of the some of its powers, it had been extended, with some powers such as section 215, enabling domestic call record and business document collection, until 2020, when Trump vetoed the bill containing its further extension. (Glossed over a lot but HERE is a brief article on it for more context). Under Elon's above definition, censorship and surveillance of individuals who have met the criteria deemed appropriate and legitimate as they may pose a threat to national security. This legal basis for surveillance, blurs the lines between security and censorship by leaving a broad definition of terrorist of internet connected crime on the table, one which some of Mr. Musk’s tweets could be argued to breach.

Finally, a more normative and thought experimentie issue I found with this position, is his reference to the will of the people being the basis for Law in a country. While this makes intuitive sense and should be the case in any democracy, the reality, I think, is a lot murkier. I’m heavily on the idea of positive and negative freedom by Isaiah Berlin and Others which I haven’t read since college so wish me luck. Broadly, speaking an individual can be said to have negative liberty is the absence of obstacles or constraints faced by and individual. On the other hand, positive liberty relates to the ability to the potential to act and release one’s potential in some way. The problem I see with Elons argument is that he assumes that free speech, and the will of the people as an extension of this, need only require negative freedom and not positive freedom. I would argue that within the current democratic system a large number of the polis suffer from a lack of positive freedom due to the role of capital within participation of the political process, through many facets of its institutions. In this way, the will of the people as codifying law and being the source of truth so to speak is very suspect in the current context of the USA.

While I may have been annoyed by this tweet and have presented some very poorly formed arguments against it, I do think free speech and beyond this, privacy, to be very pressing and difficult subjects. I think the important thing that my arguments above may argue, is that context is everything in these discussions. We must take the words and definitions, such as free speech and law discussed above, within the context they are placed. A priest and pauper may utter the same words but our reaction to such preaching is very different depending on whether it is an alter on Sunday morning or an alley on a Saturday night.

The definition of prime numbers as far as I am aware is any number that is only devisable by itself and one. In our everyday usage of numbers 3,5,7,11 or PRIME (lol) examples of these. In the field of mathematics these numbers are foundational mainly because they are close to indivisible. This feature is most widely used within cryptographic. The use of these prime numbers in Diffie-Hellman key exchange is what allows for both parties to pick a prime, agree certain constants, do some calculations and exchange this information securely. This is terribly summarised but Here is a video that does a way better job. While I’d love to talk more about encryption, and hopefully will, this is more a non-technical observation.

So great prime numbers are basically the backbone of all modern communication, what else. Well as mentioned 3 is certainly a prime that appears frequently in lives. There appears to be something particularly interesting about 3 across the board. The holy trinity within Christianity, Id, ego and super ego in Freud’s theory of consciousness, or the rule of 3 within writing are classic examples of this arrangement appearing within theories or ideas. These are particularly examples as they are social constructed and persistent areas that have been proven to just work time and time again.

Sticking with the example of 3 again, lets look at engineering. One of the most stable shapes when constructing a structure like a bridge is a triangle. Triangles are an extremely strong shape as the weight gets distributed more evenly to the base through the focal point. This example highlights the importance of primes within social settings, they provide stability. It seems to me that we appear to have instinctive intuition into mathematics and geometry in that time again we use these numbers, and corresponding shapes such as the triangle, within both our theories and models of the world.

The leveraging to the use of prime numbers within our everyday lives and social constructs adds a significant stability into our models of the world around us. Importantly, this can be used to great effective to both structure our thoughts and communicate ideas to others.

This is starting to sound a bit to grand theory and fundamentalist to me but basically this mathematical idea can go along to helping us structure our social structures to provide added stability within them. I think the role of 3 best sums up the practicality of this, through its 3 act, or setup conflict and resolution that adds a sense of completeness to story. But this can also be used to great effect in any device.

Fundamentally, I think there is something beautiful in our everyday lives, that our collective conscious recognises the stability of such foundational mathematical concept of prime numbers.

Today, as it is my first day trying this on 26th of April, 12022 (shout to kurzgesagt for the more accurate date convention), I’m going to keep it relatively short, partially because this kind of writing tires me a lot and also because I would just like to outline my aim with these writings and what I would like to achieve. This is as much for any who might be reading this as it is for establishing some goals and motivation for myself, as well as some much-needed internalised social pressure.

Predominately, these writings will be focused on my areas of interest which are human behaviour, social organisation and politics and tech (mostly emerging tech and cryptography). I will try to talk at the intersection of these topics as much. I really do think interdisciplinary discussion is so vital now to advance any field of study. Equally, my education and background stretch across these fields so I guess I should make use to those fancy bits of paper I spent years getting.

These ideas will be niche in practice I feel as I kind of want to give myself the space to let me thoughts wander and express my opinions. For the most part that is the ultimate goal of this for me rather than advancing discourse or sharing knowledge. I have struggle with expression of opinion and have always felt a great inhibition to do so, though if you have ever met me after a few drinks this may be hard to believe. To this end, I’m hoping that writing these posts regularly and posting them publicly (as of now I still have no idea where that will be), I will be more motivated to sharing my ideas and create in a more meaningful way rather than to meet some deadline for sporadic inspiration during a wicked hangover.

Anyways that’s the enough in the way of an introduction. I promise the next post will be focused on a particular topic rather than a diary entry, although it’ll probably be a little of both, we’ll see what happens. Also, if anyone has any interesting ideas for me to explore, please do reach out wherever and share. Signing off for today to go see where the hell I’m going to post those.