Thursday, June 04, 2009

Things They Should Invent: universal standard exemption from Godwin's Law

The problem with the generally-accepted application of Godwin's Law is that it assumes that a comparison with nazis is always hyperbole.

This is not necessarily true. I'm sure we can all envision, even if only hypothetically, a situation in which the best possible analogy is a comparison with nazis, and discourse would suffer from not having this analogy readily available.

Someone - ideally a committee of big-name internet people with a wide variety of political opinions - needs to standardize criteria under which a comparison with nazis is apt. If these criteria apply, people aren't allowed to shut down their opponents by shouting Godwin at them.

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