Godwin's Law and Common Reference Points

[Tim May]

At 3:39 PM +0100 3/1/01, Tom wrote:
>Ken Brown wrote:
>>  > I don't think Godwin would agree.  Godwin's Law is a natural law of Usenet
>>  > named after Mike Godwin (godwin at eff.org) concerning Usenet "discussions".
>>  > It reads, according to the Jargon File: As a Usenet discussion 
>>grows longer,
>>  > the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
>>
>>  Of course, as any text grows longer the probability that it contains any
>>  other text approaches one... just more or less slowly.  Godwin's law
>>  needs some quantification.
>
>don't think so. it's a good observation, and most likely better than
>yours unless we talk about infinities. there are libraries full of books
>where neither nazis or hitler are even mentioned. yet usenet debates DO
>converge on those topics with surprising pace. most likely a
>psychological thing - the search for a recent, extreme and well-known
>example or counter-example to your point. in the middle ages, one
>would've used witchcraft and satan instead.

A very good point. Nazis and Hitler are one of the "benchmarks" for 
evil that most of us agree upon, regardless of our various political 
beliefs. (Not counting a small segment which supports Hitler and 
Nazism.)

Thus, it's a "Schelling point" for people to compare things to, a 
common reference point that all participants are likely to have 
knowledge of. Hence the wide use of comparisons to Hitler and the 
Nazis, hence Godwin's Law. Tom is right that in earlier centuries the 
comparisons would have been to Satan and witches and suchlike.

Another such Schelling point is Big Brother, and the general language 
of George Orwell in "1984" (a novel which has given us _so many_ rich 
and illustrative additions to the English language, including, off 
the top of my head: Big Brother, thoughtcrime, war is peace, freedom 
is slavery, proles, we have always been at war with Oceania, Ministry 
of Truth, ignorance is strength, doublethink, doubleplusungood, 
Brin-style surveillance cameras in homes and flats, and several other 
rich images).

Other common reference points are references to Christ, Genghis Khan, 
Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, and so on. And World War II in 
general.

We refer to images out of history and religion as part of our common 
heritage of ideas and beliefs.

(By the way, without _defending_ World War II in any way, it was 
_such_ a watershed period, such a seminal event, that one can only 
look back in awe at what happened. The development of technology 
(radar, manufacturing methods, jet aircraft, computers, the atom 
bomb, etc.), the realignment of the political map, the whole division 
between pre-war and post-war systems. It was the defining political, 
economic, military, and historical event of the past century, 
probably the past two centuries. All things stand in the shadow of 
the Second World War.)

I believe there are many valid ways to refer to the Nazis and Hitler 
without some knee jerk invocation of Godwin's Law. (I haven't talked 
to Mike in several years, but I expect he would agree that Godwin's 
Law is often, even usually, invoked in a knee-jerk way.)

--Tim May
-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns