anyone takes Godwin's Law as an actual truth?

LanternWaste

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Mon Apr-26-10 10:47 AM
Original message

anyone takes Godwin's Law as an actual truth?

Out of an idle curiosity to see who can be lead around, I am wondering who (if anyone) takes Godwin's Law as an actual truth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

"Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical..."

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Blue_Tires

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Mon Apr-26-10 10:49 AM
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1. Nice Post, Rumsfeld...

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Tommy_Carcetti

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Mon Apr-26-10 10:53 AM
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2. You know, the Nazis had pieces of flare they made the Jews wear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGlONkndc-w

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Deep13

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Mon Apr-26-10 10:59 AM
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3. It's true that people tend to dismiss comparisons with Hitler.

It has no bearing on whether or not the comparison is apt.

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petronius

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Mon Apr-26-10 11:43 AM
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4. I think Godwin's Law has been eclipsed by the Lovejoy Corollary:

Sooner or later, someone is going to whinge about "the children"...

:)

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Bucky

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Mon Apr-26-10 12:04 PM
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6. In GD they need to sticky "Hanlon's razor"

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

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Bucky

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Mon Apr-26-10 12:02 PM
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5. Godwin himself doesn't hold to it as gospel.

It's mostly a reaction against knee jerk name calling in an accountability-free environment. A thoughtful analogy can promote understanding of your point by others. But often Nazism just makes people intellectually shut down and quit thinking. Whether the analogy is apt or not, it tends to deter communication between different viewpoints.

There's several related anti-immaturity principles to be inferred from discussion board sociology.

Just because someone tells you to shut up doesn't mean you're being censored

Just because a moderator kicks you off a board doesn't mean you're being censored

Dragging a comparison to Nazis into an online discussion doesn't automatically mean you lose, but
it's the discussion board equivalent of running a yellow light. Theoretically possible but risky

Online discussions are not just conducive to miscommunication because of a lack of nonverbal clues to the "listener." It's also inherently frustrating, and thus agitating, to the message sender. The awareness of a lack of outgoing nuance makes the message senders want to dumb down the jist of their argument. It seems to punish seeing seeing both sides of the argument.

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