Godwin's Law, Rhetoric, and Lomborg
Godwin's Law: as the number of people engaged in a debate or discussion increases, the probability of a reference to Hitler or the Nazis approaches one.
There are two important corrolaries:
The first person in a debate to compare his opponent's position to Hitler/Nazis loses.
Once a discussion reaches comparisons to Hitler/Nazis, it is no longer useful.
Not surprisingly, Hitler comparisons have come fast and furious in response to Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist.
Rhetoric is powerful and easy to abuse. Unfortunately, "debates" in the public sphere often reduce to little-kid sandbox fights in which one party, apparently no longer able to defend his position, resorts to name-calling and Hitler comparisons (see, for example, this article in Wash U's student newspaper and our response).
So what's the moral of the story? A good heuristic for debate/discussion may be to note that anyone who invokes Hitler--unless the comparison is relevant--forfeits his or her right to an audience. The world should be far too civilized for name-calling and wild accusations to be considered serious commentary.
Comments (5)
"A good heuristic for debate/discussion may be to note that anyone who invokes Hitler--unless the comparison is relevant--forfeits his or her right to an audience."
--- I'm afraid you've left a lethal loophole. In strict Godwinian terms, permitting discussion as to whether the Hitler comparison is relevant or not is already a surrender to the person who made the comparison.
Published: May 12, 2004 1:47 PM
I'd also include rudely using Somalia as a way to dismiss any serious efforts to minimize state intervention. Run across it all the time.
Published: May 12, 2004 4:27 PM
The discussion you link to here seems to be less about "any serious efforts to minimize state intervention" and more about abolishing the state altogether, and along with that, any ability to enforce contracts. That isn't anarcho-capitalism, that's just anarchy. Hitler would have loved it (ooops)
Published: May 13, 2004 2:51 AM
So, Rowan Berkely, you think that the state alone accounts for the enforcement of contracts? Do you think that if you and I were somewhere where no state could intervene (the proverbial South-seas island, perhaps, or on top of the WTC just before it fell), we could form no contract? --Or are you thinking that we could form one but would have no recourse in case the other person did not meet his contractual obligation?
I will suppose you meant the latter thing, since it makes more sense. It is true that without government there would be no PERSON or GROUP put there specifically to mend any broken contract. However, there would certainly be other forces at work to cause people to meet the terms of their contracts. Perhaps stronger forces than there are now.
If it became known about someone that he or she did not scrupulously meet his contractual obligations, that person might well still be able to buy food or small items or services for cash. However, this might not do him too much good, since he would be close to unemployable and thus be unable to GET much cash. Any such person would be well-advised to move quickly from place to place before his reputation could catch up with him, if he were unwilling or unable to reform, and he might end with a life of crime as his only option.
In other words, his capacity to live among other human beings would be severely compromised.
Without any government, it would become most important to be able to trust people, and a "good reputation" and trustworthiness would once again become desirable attributes, as they were in the Old West, a time and place in which, according to many, anarchy did live. mary
(I don't know if there is any record of any feelings Hitler may have had about the Old West. I don't think he would have liked it. It was disorderly, and I think it would have been really hard to get a uniformed group together marching in goose-steps while saluting in his direction. To me, Hitler seems unmistakably statist--a proponent of "strong central government," to say the very least).
Published: May 14, 2004 8:24 PM
Mary is correct.
In a free society, strangers in town would be met with extreme suspicion. People would wonder, why is he here? Why did he leave wherever it was he came from? Maybe it would be best if he just went back!
As it is now, people can't refuse to associate with those whose character they aren't sure of, without fear of being hauled into the state's courts on civil rights charges.
Without the state subsidizing the movement of people through road building, without the destruction of ethnically cohesive neighborhoods with anti-discrimination laws, without real estate taxes that force farmers to break up their land and sell to housing developers, making the construction of suburbs less expensve than it would otherwise be, and without the state subsidizing mortgages for those homes, we might still have real communities, where everyone actually knew everybody else. Strangers would have to prove their neighborliness before being accepted.
As it is now, it's virtually impossible for like minded people to create a community for themselves, keeping out those whom they consider undesirable. We used to have such places. They were called cities and towns. But not any more. Now we have Amerika.
Published: May 14, 2004 11:36 PM