Jul 252010
We owe a great favor to Mike Godwin. Those of us who have spent any amount of time arguing nonsense on the Internet are familiar with Godwins Law. Briefly, Godwins Law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches … given enough time, all discussions —regardless of topic or scope —inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.”
The most wonderful aspect of Godwin is that “there is a tradition in many newsgroups, and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically ‘lost’ whatever debate was in progress.”
