As her moniker would imply, hbd chick writes about human biodiversity, and many other topics in the arts and sciences that interest her. She used to run a great blog, but it became inactive because of health issues. For the last couple of years she has been holding up her end with frequent entertaining posts on Twitter. Now the Twitter Thought Police have suspended her. I don’t know what sham reason they’ve given for doing it. I’m sure “hate speech” would be appropriately cynical and arrogant, because she’s the furthest thing from a hater I can imagine. In my personal opinion, we “ought” to smash these monopolies. I will eagerly await the reaction of all the academic peddlers of “moral progress.” I hope she will find the strength to start blogging again.
UPDATE: Apparently hbd chick’s suspension has been lifted, at least for the time being. Twitter has not yet deigned to reveal what lame reason they had for suspending her in the first place.
Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. The fact that there is no objective morality most definitely does not mean that you are forbidden to fight back if you or someone you admire is attacked.
Here is a personal opinion: Denial of access to the social means of communication is denial of freedom of speech. These monopolies need to be destroyed.
In Australia we have seen an increasing number draconian anti free speech and privacy legislative moves under the guise of measures to ‘clamp down on extremism’ etc, a government who banned the visit of Chelsea Manning as an undesirable and of course the ongoing issue of Assange. Let there be no doubt that the direction we are headed is totalitarianism, if we are not there already. I often think the reason they don’t bother with small people making such statement is that the vast majority of people wouldn’t move if they had a rocket inserted and the fuse lit.
However, start having an impact and then watch the response.
As for facebook and twitter, they are full of people who will ‘object’ to some perceived breach of ‘moral conduct’ to silence the voices of others,.
I know we diverge strongly here but the actions of the US government and its satellite the UK in silencing Assange strikes me as not so much the beginning, but the end of the beginning re censorship of dissent.
The parallels between a ‘Religious Autocracy’ and a ‘totalitarian Nation state’
seem to me to be self evident, there is no ‘objective’ reason that any Nation State exist, they are little more than the collective construct of their peoples.
The self serving academic left, well to say anymore would be liked pouring form the empty into the void!
We really are in a hell of a state.
Yes, the leftist monopolies are making it abundantly clear what we can expect in their future utopia of “kindness,” “joy,” and “moral progress.”
Here’s my “conspiracy freakish” take.
EVERYTHING in the media, not just the news, is about money and power. The ideologues on all sides are just a distracting smokescreen hiding this simple truth. In my new novel, On Vestige Way, I talk about what I call the Labyrinth instead of the deep state. It is not The richest people in the world who controls the world, it’s the second and third layer of power that control the richest people by making/keeping them rich and powerful. They are the true hands-on powerbrokers. In the United States and elsewhere in this global economy, it seems it doesn’t matter what party is in power or what president. Ultimately, EVERYTHING we see is a side show meant to divert attention from who benefits from what is hidden from view.
On Deception Watch was leveraged off the federal destruction of KMS Fusion. On Vestige Way is leveraged off the indestructible power of fossil fuels still in the ground.
Manipulating and controlling the perceptions of the People is a small investment for the carbon-power Labyrinth.
But are there any limits to how the powerful can alter our perceptions of what constitutes ‘moral’? In the short term, deviations they make from the status quo will be seen if they are sufficiently large magnitude. But what happens if there is a slow accumulation, yielding a sort of compound interest?
Maybe an intermediate solution is legislation forcing detailed reasons for suspensions and bans and deletions. Facebook published detailed moderation guidelines after Zuckerberg got grilled in Washington. Why not force social media to be transparent if it has something sufficiently close to a monopoly? Otherwise, it very much does serve as preparation for totalitarian rule.
Somewhat related: I’m glad to see your blog post Haidt and Lukianoff on “The Coddling of the American Mind”; are you aware they turned it into a book? (published July 17, 2018)
Human nature sets limits to what the powerful can do with morality, as demonstrated by the Communists. They subverted whole branches of the sciences to “prove” the opposite, but it didn’t work. Today the “progressive” Left is just as effective as the Communists were in their time at manipulating moral emotions. I don’t see any lasting antidote other than understanding what morality actually is, and why it exists.
I think your “intermediate solution” would be very good, and a lot easier to implement than old fashioned trust busting. It would make the existing gross bias a lot more transparent, if nothing else.