Shut Up About "Godwin's Law" Already
"Godwin's Law" is not a very interesting law, and those who harp on it and use t as a trump card probably do at least as much harm as good. Hitler comes up in philosophical discussions all the time--which discussions, let me add, are in general far more enlightening and reasonable than well over 90% of what gets said on blogs. Why does this happen? Because Hitler provides a clean, uncontroversial touchstone of moral and political badness, and, consequently, a case about which even two disputants should be able to agree if they can agree about anything. So, for example, when friends of mine express disapproval of the death penalty, it's usually profitable for me to ask something like "But you recognize that Hitler deserved the death penalty, right?" Most acknowledge that. This shows that they aren't opposed to the death penalty in principle, but rather (like me) simply concerned about errors in its application or some similar merely practical point. On the other hand, someone who thinks that even Hitler should not have been executed had he been captured probably is opposed to the death penalty in all possible cases, thus in principle. (I'm not sure whether they think he deserved community service or what...but that's a different issue...) This is one small trick that makes at least some progress possible in philosophical discussions. Try that on the internets, however, and some dumbass will shout "Godwin's Law!" and everything goes downhill from there.
The idea behind talk of Godwin's Law is, I suppose, that people have a tendency to try to compare their opponents to Hitler, and that this tendency is particularly bad on the internet where the quality of most political discussion is pretty low and tempers run pretty high. So, to the extent that it's supposed to just remind people that accusing your opponent of being like Hitler is usually easy and misguided, it's o.k. by me. But this is very different from using Hitler as an uncontroversial case in discussion.
And appeals to this law simply muck up the gears of discussion when legitimate an enlightening references to Hitler generate cries of "Godwin's Law!" and the attendant presupposition that the person who made the reference has "lost" the argument.
Of course, the very view that political discussion should be more like argument than inquiry, and that there are winners and losers is an even bigger problem.
But that's a different point.
"Godwin's Law" is not a very interesting law, and those who harp on it and use t as a trump card probably do at least as much harm as good. Hitler comes up in philosophical discussions all the time--which discussions, let me add, are in general far more enlightening and reasonable than well over 90% of what gets said on blogs. Why does this happen? Because Hitler provides a clean, uncontroversial touchstone of moral and political badness, and, consequently, a case about which even two disputants should be able to agree if they can agree about anything. So, for example, when friends of mine express disapproval of the death penalty, it's usually profitable for me to ask something like "But you recognize that Hitler deserved the death penalty, right?" Most acknowledge that. This shows that they aren't opposed to the death penalty in principle, but rather (like me) simply concerned about errors in its application or some similar merely practical point. On the other hand, someone who thinks that even Hitler should not have been executed had he been captured probably is opposed to the death penalty in all possible cases, thus in principle. (I'm not sure whether they think he deserved community service or what...but that's a different issue...) This is one small trick that makes at least some progress possible in philosophical discussions. Try that on the internets, however, and some dumbass will shout "Godwin's Law!" and everything goes downhill from there.
The idea behind talk of Godwin's Law is, I suppose, that people have a tendency to try to compare their opponents to Hitler, and that this tendency is particularly bad on the internet where the quality of most political discussion is pretty low and tempers run pretty high. So, to the extent that it's supposed to just remind people that accusing your opponent of being like Hitler is usually easy and misguided, it's o.k. by me. But this is very different from using Hitler as an uncontroversial case in discussion.
And appeals to this law simply muck up the gears of discussion when legitimate an enlightening references to Hitler generate cries of "Godwin's Law!" and the attendant presupposition that the person who made the reference has "lost" the argument.
Of course, the very view that political discussion should be more like argument than inquiry, and that there are winners and losers is an even bigger problem.
But that's a different point.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:46 AM
2 Comments:
I postulate "n00b's Law"
It says that, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of the n00bs' victory approaches 1.
That is, the more time a n00b has to speak, the more time he has to convince others that he's right by making ridiculous illogical assertions until you just can't defend yourself against the idiocy any longer, and people, as they tend to buy flashy idiocy over interesting logic, will come to believe that you are wrong, and will accept the n00b's ideas and views.
So next time someone shouts "Godwin's Law", I propose that you enlighten them of "n00b's Law".
Maybe we should put it in Wikipedia.
We could even have "n00bs Law Corollaries" such as:
Corollary 1: The obfuscation of the original topic of the discussion increases in direct correlation to the increase in the length of the discussion.
Corollary 2: The vapidity of the arguments being made increases in direct correlation to the increase in the length of the discussion.
Several (!) years ago, my friends and I debated all kinds of items back and forth, from politics to religion to bizarre news items, and we independently came up with Godwin's Law, in that we eventually felt that bringing Hitler into any discussion (that wasn't about WWII) was pretty much conversation stopping.
Because comparing someone to Hitler generally causes the conversation to immediately degenerate and at the very least cause hurt feelings in the person whose cause was being compared to the Nazis. Which is never a good thing when you're trying to have a civil discussion among friends.
In general, it forced us to put a bit more thought into what we were saying, and in general, we discovered that it was just as easy to say, for example, "Do you believe that a president or prime minister who encourages genocide should receive the death penalty?"
(And as an aside, your example, "But you recognize that Hitler deserved the death penalty, right?" is a loaded question, as it assumes a right and wrong answer. I note this both because I don't believe agree with you, and because you rarely make such mistakes.)
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