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Godwin's Law
From The Jargon Dictionary - http://www.netmeg.net/jargon/terms/g/godwin_s_law.html
Godwin's Law /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Ah, so if I call you a Nazi, I lose, while if you are a Nazi, you win...
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More precisely, the subsequent value of the thread is zero. It may be continued anyway - some people will put great effort into explaining why the analogy between Nazis and whatever is annoying them is, on this occasion, fully justified and illuminating. And other people will patiently explain why it isn't and why such comparisons are demeaning to those involved in either event.
There are indeed many things in the world that resemble the Nazis in all sorts of ways. However, not all of these resemblences are worth pointing out.
Suppose M(X) is some measurement of how bad X is (how much X restricts human freedom, how many people are killed by X, how much discrimination against unpopular ethnic groups is entailed by X, whatever), and M(N) is how bad the Nazis are according to this measurement. If you think A is an extremely bad thing, you may observe that M(A) is close to M(N), and you may be tempted to compare A to the Nazis. However, when you are in this situation, you can almost always find some B such that M(B) is even closer to M(A) than M(N) is. (For example, rather than comparing [2001-?? US Attorney General] John Ashcroft to Hitler, you can compare the post-9/11 detention of Muslim terrorism suspects to the Palmer raids.)
So if you post a message in which you compare A to the Nazis, it's usually a sign that you didn't bother to find B before sending your message, i.e., you're too lazy to compose a more substantial argument, i.e., your messages regarding A are not worth the effort of reading or replying to
From The Jargon Dictionary - http://www.netmeg.net/jargon/terms/g/godwin_s_law.html
Godwin's Law /prov./ [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Ah, so if I call you a Nazi, I lose, while if you are a Nazi, you win...
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More precisely, the subsequent value of the thread is zero. It may be continued anyway - some people will put great effort into explaining why the analogy between Nazis and whatever is annoying them is, on this occasion, fully justified and illuminating. And other people will patiently explain why it isn't and why such comparisons are demeaning to those involved in either event.
There are indeed many things in the world that resemble the Nazis in all sorts of ways. However, not all of these resemblences are worth pointing out.
Suppose M(X) is some measurement of how bad X is (how much X restricts human freedom, how many people are killed by X, how much discrimination against unpopular ethnic groups is entailed by X, whatever), and M(N) is how bad the Nazis are according to this measurement. If you think A is an extremely bad thing, you may observe that M(A) is close to M(N), and you may be tempted to compare A to the Nazis. However, when you are in this situation, you can almost always find some B such that M(B) is even closer to M(A) than M(N) is. (For example, rather than comparing [2001-?? US Attorney General] John Ashcroft to Hitler, you can compare the post-9/11 detention of Muslim terrorism suspects to the Palmer raids.)
So if you post a message in which you compare A to the Nazis, it's usually a sign that you didn't bother to find B before sending your message, i.e., you're too lazy to compose a more substantial argument, i.e., your messages regarding A are not worth the effort of reading or replying to
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