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I created Godwin's Law in 1990 as a warning
- rdiddly 10y agoSo in short, Godwin's Law is descriptive, and intended to be subtly prescriptive in the opposite direction.
- geofft 10y agoThere are so many ads that interfere with reading the content that I gave up halfway through. Are we as the internet community going to continue this strategy of appeasement with the ad industry?
- dghughes 10y agoWhen the first thing that appears is a request to turn off your browser's adblocker I know there's no point in continuing. I just closed the page and going by your comments I'm glad I did.
- trvz 10y agoThe site was usable with Ghostery as the only blocker. I recommend turning other extensions off, they usually don't contribute in addition to it.
- qrendel 10y agoHere it is on pastebin: http://pastebin.com/j490asvt http://pastebin.com/j490asvt
- erikbye 10y agoI highly recommend Firefox' Reader View, and I rarely recommend anything.
- iak8god 10y ago> When the first thing that appears is a request to turn off your browser's adblocker ... NoScript kept me from seeing this or the ads.
- CephalopodMD 10y agoThese ads are literally Hitler!
- maxerickson 10y agoAre you trying to be doubly ironic or just superficially clever? The doubly ironic thing would be that the article is mostly about how this is the sort of Hitler comment we should be most annoyed with.
- ghurtado 10y agoNothing kills sarcasm faster than a vivisection.
- maxerickson 10y agoSure, but I don't trust that there was any irony intended.
- rdiddly 10y agoYou don't acknowledge (a.k.a. "have a sense") of the irony (a.k.a. "of humor").
- maxerickson 10y agoI'm relatively hilarious on the message board spectrum. I'd have a tough go of it when you start talking about people that are actually funny.
- Mahn 10y agoOnly on HN would one question the nature of a pun :)
- Karunamon 10y agoThe uBlock counter in Safari hit 24... wow. Even with no ads the layout is ridiculously busy. Thank god for reader mode! On a side note, the "but we deserve to get paid!" argument is quickly falling on deaf ears. Your company wants to control how my browser renders markup, the answer to which is a hearty GFYS. You want to place an ad or two to cover costs.. fine. You want to abuse my bandwidth, security, and attention? Nah.
- oolongCat 10y agoAnd this is why I have to use ad-blockers.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThat is one of the sites where if you click firefox's "Reader View" it immediately becomes palatable. Same with wired.
- sholanozie 10y agoRight click > "Inspect" > "Delete element" Problem solved.
- geofft 10y agoThat's pretty dismissive. There are a few elements that start popping up as I read the article, so no, it does not solve the problem.
- kowdermeister 10y agoSo let's crowdsource a list of ideas for alternate revenue streams for online news portals that pays: - writers - engineers - hosting fees - office rent - other staff and expenses The list goes as: - a̶d̶v̶e̶r̶t̶i̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ - subscription (around 2% will pay) http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/newsonomics-10-numbers-on-the-new-york-times-1-million-digital-subscriber-milestone/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/newsonomics-10-numbers-on-t... - sell merchandising (might pay coffee budget) - ???
- geofft 10y ago> subscription (around 2% will pay) 2% of what? If I'm reading the article you link correctly, those 2% are also the only people who get access to non-paywall content.
- corecoder 10y agoI don't share this way of thinking. If I enter a shop and they act with disrespect and do shady, annoying and often harmful things in order to earn a bit more, I don't feel compelled to provide them with a viable business model before expressing my disappointment. I wonder: do you imply we should make an effort to help all struggling businesses we encounter all the time, or only the ones that do bad things?
- grkvlt 10y agoWhat about when you enter a shop, and they ask you to look at some harmless pictures and read some bits of text, in order to give you the goods cheaper, or for free?
- corecoder 10y agoThat has indeed happened to me. Sometimes I've felt like complying with the kind request, others I've elected to decline. In the latter cases, the moment they revealed that the option was not in fact optional, I left the shop out of indignation. In the former, the harmless pictures and texts actually proved themselves harmless: if they didn't, if there were a history of harmless pictures that are really harmful, I would never ever accept to look at one again.
- eprime 10y agoI have heard from several fellow HackerNews readers (in other forums) that Godwins Law doesn't apply anymore mainly because of their opposition to Trump, and their own or their allies behaviour in breaking this law. It seems to imply that because we live in the current year, the present day, that previous laws no longer have validity, because of the false assumption that the present day has more importance than any other time, ever. (This assumption ignores history, tellingly). That, and they consider that in Trumps case the comparisons can actually have validity. The other reasoning given from our fellow peers that I have heard sounds like that this law was made during the era of quiet bulletin boards, made up of people with a shared mind set, with a shared sense of humour, and the Internet now has changed beyond recognition. Therefore any laws made about the internet back then have no validity. I would like to suggest that when you consider something no longer valid it could give you pause to think about your reasonings for doing so.
- geofft 10y ago1. Godwin's Law says that as a discussion continues, the probability of a Hitler reference approaches one. It doesn't say anything about the aptness of a Hitler reference. It certainly does not say that you should not make a Hitler reference, or the one who does loses the debate. The only way you could "break" Godwin's Law is to refuse to make Hitler references. 2. Mike Godwin himself says that comparing Trump to Hitler is justifiable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/sure-call-trump-a-nazi-just-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-talking-about/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/... 3. Usually when I see comparisons of Trump to Hitler, and discussions of whether that comparison is defensible, there's rarely any discussion of how the "present day" changes anything. Godwin does make the point that in 2015, we now have the capability to question poor arguments more effectively. But I've seen basically no arguments that the world is fundamentally different from the past, just that Trump is a fundamentally different demagogue from those we've seen since 1946.
- skylan_q 10y agoWaPo, funded by Bezos, who has plenty to lose from a Trump presidency will obviously do anything he can to tout that Trump = Hitler.
- cokernel 10y agoThis essay is about the need to think and argue mindfully rather than "with glib allusion". It's disappointing that the early comments here were all focused on issues irrelevant to the content of the essay, issues that moreover would be easily avoided with wget or curl, or even just turning off JavaScript and images in any common browser. The essay's right in the HTML with zero obfuscation applied. Yes, there's cruft there, too. Such is life. While I've been writing this comment, the distribution of comment quality has changed, which is somewhat heartening.
- return0 10y agoIt has a lot to do with the structure commonly used in comment boards. There is no way avoid derailment by setting a direction to the conversation. It's the central limit theorem of the internet, really, the sum of a large number of opinions tends to be normally distributed around "mediocre".
- kbutler 10y agoNow Godwin's just being a nazi.
- JustinAiken 10y agoSometimes a comparison to Nazis is wholly appropriate.
- rdiddly 10y agoIt's not trying to discourage all reference to Nazis; only the sloppy, frivolous ones. It's too easy to shout "Nazi" and let the word do your work for you. But I would think a rationally supportable comparison with Nazis in any given situation would be appreciated, not to mention necessary to avoid repeating history.
- corecoder 10y agoSometimes it's hardly the majority of times, though.
- eprime 10y agoCould you give an example of an appropriate comparison?
- jackweirdy 10y agoThe growth of Fascism in pre-1930s Italy. Or perhaps Spain. Mussolini or Franco.
- tigershark 10y agoMussolini created fascism in 1919, Hitler was inspired by him and after became much more dangerous. Francisco Franco took power much later. "Fascism" etimology is from "Fasci di combattimento" the political party founded by Mussolini.
- jackweirdy 10y agoThank you for comparing Mussolini and Hitler and proving my point :)
- jobigoud 10y ago
- matt4077 10y agoThe anti-intellectualism runs deep with HN. Anything not posted on facebook.github.io/react, twitter or bitcoin-daily-earn-money-fast.suckers is deemed worthless. Technical measures to get this useless drivel are, however, deeply sought after and their use, even when illegal/morally gray is advocated. As longs as it's not a car manufacturer not sharing the GPL-licensed code they did not use. Then it's top posts three days in a row. I mean, a CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, what's a book, any book, in comparison? Even Gödel, Escher Bach doesn't compile.
- partycoder 10y agoThen check https://www.researchnews.com https://www.researchnews.com, it's probably more appealing to you. Unfortunately doesn't have a comments section. There's also always reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/compilers https://www.reddit.com/r/compilers https://www.reddit.com/r/osdev https://www.reddit.com/r/osdev or whatever
- wyager 10y agoMaybe you're just reading low quality threads. Your complaints do not match my experience at all.
- cokernel 10y agoI think our experiences may differ. Just looking through stories I've seen on the front page recently, there's the following: * A slave in Scotland * They knew it was round, damn it * Two hundred terabyte proof is largest ever (granted, the 200 TB is not what's really interesting here) * How the ArXiv decides what's science * Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison * Hiroshima (1946) This seems like a healthy mix of topics, and they don't seem to have been deemed worthless. I have noted a certain amount of hostility to philosophical topics, but I would venture a guess that there's been hostility to philosophy in general at all periods in history. I expect to see a certain percentage of comments in an HN thread about how the topic is presented. Everybody's got to let off some steam sometimes. I made my initial comment because I was surprised at how many comments addressed only how the topic was presented rather than that and the actual content.
- skylan_q 10y agoYou guys might not be noticing, but we've thrown the "Hitler/Nazi" stuff around so much that it doesn't have meaning anymore. It's actually been rehabilitating fascism and anti-semitism.
- TillE 10y agoOn the list of reasons for the rise of the extreme right in Europe (for example), I doubt that cracks the top 1000.
- skylan_q 10y agoCalling regular people nazis make them associate more with nazis.
- CM30 10y agoYeah, I agree with this point. The media, the politicians, various elites in general have called people who disagree with things like globalisation, immigration, etc bigots and nazis so long that they're being drawn to extremists who don't constantly attack them.
- pessimizer 10y agoI firmly believe that the media drove Trump much farther into the racist right than he originally planned to go. Originally he was just anti-immigrant/nativist, just like every other Republican and many Democrats, and then he put his foot in his mouth when he tried to differentiate the character of illegal immigrants who come over the Southern border from illegal immigrants who fly in or come in on work and student visas. There is a difference, in that immigrants from the Southern border are very average people, from very near the U.S., and frequently have U.S. ties - it's just a cheaper process, paid for more in sweat and blood than in cash. Immigrants who come in on expensive visas to work and go to school, and who pay for expensive travel to and from the U.S. are more likely drawn from the middle and upper-middle classes of their countries of origin. To him, that meant rapists, drug dealers, and murderers, because he's a rich Manhattan/Connecticut conservative, disgusted by and suspicious of people who work with their hands. "The wall" is something that has been added to in a bipartisan way by xenophobes from both sides of the aisle for a couple of decades at this point, and it was somehow used as evidence that he's more racist than the rest of Congress in combination with that remark. Sadly, it turned out that the image that the media smeared him with was even more attractive to a majority of white American men than the "I make good deals" persona alone, he immediately became unstoppable, and leaned into it as far as he could. Not that I'm saying that he hasn't always been a bit racist (most libertarian conservatives are), but I don't think that it was a dominant part of his worldview, or that he would have ever dreamed of running for President on a primarily racist platform. Hope I didn't say anything offensive here, I tried to be careful...
- danharaj 10y agoThe nazis have been reduced to an abstract symbol of evil. The ways that they co-opted liberal institutions to seize power is ignored. They happened in real life. They used the same levers of power everyone else agrees are legitimate. They weren't a dark cloud of evil sweeping through Germany, they were human beings acting with purpose and intent. Their means can be analyzed. The fascists today work the same way as the fascists of yesterday. There's that apocryphal statement "fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag". Maybe, maybe not. But I know that if fascism manages to seize absolute power again, and it is getting perilously close with all these far-right governments getting elected all over the place and the ever increasing audacity with which liberal governments bring their weapons down on the human beings that stand in their way, it will do so while shrieking "free speech" all the way. Free speech is such a, such a sacred institution, and it's supposed to keep us safe from tyranny. Just like democratic elections, right? And everyone will act surprised how suddenly it seems we are in their grips. Sticking to ideals and trying to have an ideology of "freedom" doesn't stop nazis. Fascists of all stripes need to be treated as engaged in concrete power struggle, not abstract ideological debate.
- tokenadult 10y agoI agree with you that we should be wary and stick to sound ideals. The other day I read a column by Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky arguing, "Right-Wing Populists Are Running Out of Time," http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-26/trump-and-his-imitators-are-running-out-of-time http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-26/trump-and-... so perhaps danger of a neo-Nazi movement is lessening while we stay wary and stick to ideals. By the way, Bershinky's very latest column directly discusses Godwin's Law, the main topic of this thread, and is titled "Comparisons to Hitler Can Be Useful. Discuss." http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-27/comparisons-to-hitler-can-be-useful-discuss http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-27/comparison...
- mback00 10y agoHe should have mentioned Chuck Norris in the discussion.
- rdiddly 10y agoOn that note, anyone feel like maybe we need a Godwin's Law for Star Wars & Star Trek? Someone will always mention the Force, Jedi, "young Paduwan," the droids you're looking for, a bad feeling about this, on the one hand, and warp speed, beam me up, fascinating, the holodeck, the Borg etc. on the other. Or maybe that's just the nerds I associate with.
- personjerry 10y agoI thought he was going to make a more general point--that as discussions go on, more and more extreme references and analogies will be made, until inevitably comparisons to the "best" and "worst" things in history are made.
- milcron 10y agoThe general point would probably be: As discussions approach infinity, the probability of any arbitrary string appearing in conversation approaches 1. There's no predictive power in the statement whatsoever so it doesn't really tell us anything.
- anotherevan 10y agoWhat a superlative way of completely missing the point.
- tunap 10y agoThe most efficient way to forget is to not contemplate or revisit. Godwin's is just the result of copious retrospection on the dirty/dark side of human nature. Which is warranted in lesser extremes than genocide, as well, IMO. I didn't open link, based on non-nazi references to the page's elements. I have, however, read enough literature on 'lizard brains', group dynamics and human nature to realize we, as a species, need constant reminders of the damage done by our tendencies to oppress & extinguish those who we deem "different".
- jrapdx3 10y ago> I didn't open link, based on non-nazi references to the page's elements. I assume the "link" is to the article. If so, that's unfortunate, the article was very well written and thought provoking. The essential message Godwin has tried to impart is the antithesis of "lizard brain" reactivity, to be aware of what we are in fact saying or writing, and appreciate the gravity of invoking the memory of Nazi behavior or holocaust tragedy. Yes, reminders to refresh consciousness of our tendencies to regress are absolute necessity and constantly useful. Edit: wording/grammar.
- nerdponx 10y agoIf anything, this thread taught me that some people actually take Godwin's law to be something other than tongue-in-cheek.
- pjscott 10y agoAny post that includes the string "Hitler" is wrong.
- ry_ry 10y agoIncluding Godwin himself. I'd always assumed it was a clever piece of off-the-cuff satire, and related to ill considered or reactionary responses in a debate. It hadn't occurred to me the whole thing might a po-faced social experiment. Still, history is written by the victors* and all that.
- chvid 10y agoMr. Godwin could also have mentioned Islam and Donald Trump's movement in the US. Two major movements which often get compared to Nazism even in well-established media. I think personally think it is a sign of a combination of lack of tact, knowledge and an unwillingness to compromise.
- daveguy 10y agoOr it could be a sign that Trump is a fascist.
- drdoom 10y ago> My view, which I've held for many decades now, is that glib and frivolous invocations of Hitler, or Nazis, or the Holocaust, are a kind of forgetting. So true. I have myself observed / felt this several times. My experience is that the facts of any discussion are laid out pretty quickly at the beginning. There is something that prolongs the discussion and heats up the arguments on all sides and I believe it is our collective emotional baggage, or lack of it. Some twist their words to mean anything just to stay in the conversation, some dig in their heels in the hopes of never having to be proven wrong, some stick to the bare facts but ignore others' emotional investment, etc. And some just enjoy trolling as if it is a spectator sport where they flame both sides but without any meaningful contribution of their own towards a resolution. Sadly, I have not found an approach that works better than to quit the discussion cold turkey.
- sillysaurus3 10y agoThe number of people here that are describing trolling as fun, amusing, and effective is pretty high. I wonder why this is the case? Even if so many people enjoy being an ass or ruthlessly screwing over other people, it's strange that they'd openly admit it. One possibility is that it's a byproduct of the school system. Most of us spent years at each other's throats in a Lord of the Flies type environment, so it's natural for this behavior to transfer to the internet.
- theoapps 10y agoIt's one of the foundations of our western civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 10y agoThey don't necessarily mean that it is fun to be an ass. I think it's probably a fine line, but there are "trollish" comments that can be made that aren't even disingenuous, never mind nasty or negative. The so called old school trolling wasn't about disruptive behavior, it was about getting people to consider thoughts that they aren't necessarily comfortable with. And not necessarily uncomfortable in a dark or disturbing way.
- SFJulie 10y agoMy experience is that the root cause of nazism did not disappear and that some argument leads to Godwin point. Censorship of opinion by calling trolls whoever call an argument that is an obvious slippery slope to old nazis argument will not stop people from taking the slippery slope. And also under-educated people using the nazi red flag to apply political correctness censorship. And well, maybe nazism should be renamed for capsocism when capitalist claiming monopoly should be enforced by states and market negotiation for the workers killed. We are going back to shit ages. Where birth and so called merit of birth or power worth more than everything. Sorry mister Godwin, our era is preparing itself for dark ages.
- rdiddly 10y agoWhy don't you surprise me by not downvoting this after reading just the first sentence, because it is a serious question: Is "never forget" really the best response to a trauma in the first place? I'm not sure this is a settled question. If I'm raped let's say, should I carry that rape vividly in my head every day for the rest of my life, in the hopes of avoiding it in the future? If I do that, haven't I already in fact ruined that future by thinking about the same trauma every day and making it part of my reality? Also, if you believe some people, that which you think about constantly, even for purposes of avoiding it, is exactly what you bring into being, in both subtle and, some say concretely manifest ways. Maybe instead I should try to forget the incident (knowing I never really will, but letting go of it as much as possible) and move on with my life? Those who are haunted by traumatic memories would probably love to forget them if they had the option. What if we utterly forgot about Hitler. Would we be worse off, really? Do we NEED to study injustice to learn justice? Do we need to study brutality to learn kindness? Or do we just get our hands dirty by acculturating ourselves to things that are not justice, not kindness? Again I'd say it's far from a settled question.
- dredmorbius 10y agoWhat I see as most useful is incorporating the lessons of the experience to avoid it in future. Recognising a problem, particularly a complex one based in dynamics of a situation, is often difficult. Systemic resposes, feedback, nonlinearity, stocasticity, unknown external inputs, etc., etc., mean that life isn't deterministic. At the same time, there are signs of things Not Going Well. To take the relationship / rape case, there are red flags and circumstances in which unwanted outcomes are more likely. Knowing these and being aware of them can make all the difference. While catastrophic events can themselves be hugely truamatic, a small action early on can often avoid them. In complex circumstances where you've got to convince others of the problem, this can be ... complicated. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fsr0g/hierarchy_of_failures_in_problem_resolution/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fsr0g/hierarc... Ultimately, what you're looking for is the ability to take a traumatic experience and build behavioral responses which avoid it in future. The "never forget* element is part of that -- the size and brightness of the red flag. But responding to that flag appropriately is the other part. (And if the red flags have white circles and reversed swastikas, pay all the more heed.)
- rdiddly 10y agoIf Nazis have been reduced to superficiality through glib comparisons ("crying Nazi"), then it's worth pointing out that Godwin's law has suffered the same fate through its own glib application ("crying Godwin"). We need a Godwin's Law for Godwin's Law. <edit>This has been dubbed Diddly's Law:</edit> "As the years roll by on the internet, the probability of someone mentioning Godwin once Hitler has been mentioned, is approaching 1."
- DjangoReinhardt 10y agoCan we call this the R-Diddly law, please?
- rdiddly 10y agoHow about Diddly's Law. I'm fine with that, hah!
- maxerickson 10y agoDon't forget to mention Stephen Wolfram.
- draw_down 10y agoThis law is terrible,or at least how it's used. It just gives an out for idiots to call as soon as the word Nazi comes out, so they can stop talking about the issue at hand and instead demonstrate their familiarity with this stupid thing. Nazis are an example of ultimate evil, that's why they come up. The law was coined with good intentions but the way people use it drives me batty.
- hartpuff 10y ago> It just gives an out for idiots to call as soon as the word Nazi comes out Something even worse happens on Reddit. Whenever anyone mentions Nazis or Hitler, someone is absolutely, certifiably guaranteed to fall over themselves trying to be the first (in the thread; the 876458430854th overall) to post: "Hitler killed Hitler". Followed inevitably by: "But he also killed the man who killed Hitler".
- Swizec 10y agoTrolling IS fun. Great way to learn multiple sides of any argument AND to discover why people care in the first place. It's a good way to learn about people.
- bobwaycott 10y agoBut aren't there better ways to learn about people and why they care about an issue in the first place?
- clevernickname 10y agoDefine "better." Nicer? Maybe. More effective? Probably not. More amusing? Certainly not.
- bobwaycott 10y agoMore effective, certainly. Trolling invokes emotional reactions that, I think, drown out rational discussion. It's just taking cheap shots for amusement, with no real intention of gaining better understanding.
- kachnuv_ocasek 10y agoFrom my experience, I've found that trolling and Socratic dialogue bring out the key points forthright and also highlight the most severe points of disagreement. That usually doesn't happen so fast when arguing with hard facts (when applicable). You can also hardly say that about a Wikipedia article or a propaganda poster/website/book.
- bobwaycott 10y agoIt kind of makes the philosophy student in me worry to see trolling and Socratic dialogue offered as seeming equivalents. Though, I suppose Socrates was a damn good troll in his time.
- grub5000 10y agoI don't know, are there?
- Dylan16807 10y ago> a physicist named Travis Hoppe argued only last year that his analysis of Reddit data disproved the law. What he disproved was the corollary, that whoever mentions Nazis has lost and ended the argument. People mistakenly refer to that corollary as "Godwin's law", but that's as far as the conflict goes. There is no disagreement about the statistics. Nazi references will happen in a supermajority of moderately large discussions.