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Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by netsharc on Friday August 18, 2017 @09:19AM (#15045805)
Someone needs to invent a Godwin-like rule about the word "blockchain" being used in Internet conversations...
Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by firmgently on Friday August 18, 2017 @09:33AM (#15045922)
I don't understand how Godwin's rule is useful. Its only effect on arguments is that on top of the inevitable "Hitler" comment you now also get an inevitable "Godwin" follow-up, usually delivered with the air of having somehow won the argument. It's beyond redundant IMO.
Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by zimpenfish on Friday August 18, 2017 @09:40AM (#15046007)
There's no such thing as "Godwin's Rule" - it's "Godwin's Law" and it said nothing about winning arguments; only that as the length of an argument increased, the probability that a comparison with the Nazis would appear approached 1.

You can't invoke it either. It's a statistical observation.

Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by wu-ikkyu on Friday August 18, 2017 @11:22AM (#15046977)
How is that a useful observation, though?

As the length of any internet argument grows, the probability of anything being said would approach 1.

Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by marcus_holmes on Sunday August 20, 2017 @07:43AM (#15058009)
I don't know about anyone else, but unless the discussion is actually historical in nature, then the point at which I find a discussion ceases to be interesting and reverts to name-calling is about the point that Godwin's Law appears.
Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by ionised on Monday August 21, 2017 @11:16AM (#15065165)
That's because people abuse Godwin's law (or what they think it is) to shut down discussion.

Taken from Wikipedia;

Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by American lawyer, journalist and author Glenn Greenwald.

Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust", Godwin has written. In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump.

Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by hedora on Sunday August 20, 2017 @10:13PM (#15061450)
Re:Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression by spiffytech on Saturday August 19, 2017 @03:15PM (#15055067)
"Any internet conversation of unbounded size will inevitably attempt to solve social problems with a blockchain."