only777 said:
No, because that's called "Godwins Law" and it shows you have no reasonable argument. |
That’s not what Godwin’s Law means. Godwin’s Law is about the inevitability of nazi comparisons in online discussions, not about whether using an extreme example is a valid way to test an absolute statement. If someone says "never celebrate another person’s death," the claim is absolute, meaning no exceptions. The easiest way to test if an absolute holds is to take it to the most extreme imaginable case and see if it still works. If it doesn’t, then it’s not truly absolute, and the discussion shifts to where the line is. That was all I was trying to do.
I didn't even mention nazis specifically, although "worst person in history" certainly invokes that, indeed. But the point still stands no matter who you think the "worst person in history" is. It could be Hitler, Mao, Marx, Freud, Nero, Jack the Ripper, T. S. Eliot, or the old man from your neighborhood who used to bully you when you were a kid. The point isn’t who you pick, it’s that if your absolute rule has an exception, then it's not truly absolute. It's just something you repeat to cut any argument short and avoid thinking about it.
As an aside, some nazi comparisons are apt (Mike Godwin said so himself). Invoking Godwin's Law whenever one comes up is just lazy.
