The Incompleteness of Godwin's Law

∨ THE INCOMPLETENESS OF GODWIN'S LAW ⊻


I have never been content with Godwin's Law. As it is, it is obviously incomplete.

* It fails to consider at least one specific case where playing the [HITLERCARD] is prudent.

Because the explanation is so involved and such a beast, I steered clear. Time has now permitted my tackling of this issue. Removed from the Politics subforum, its synergy is presented here in its unabridged and nonredacted form.

No animals - with the possible exception of the beast itself - were intentionally harmed or feelings intentionally hurt. An attempt to enlighten the mood is made with humor.

My apologies in advance for such an ambitious post and to CMA lest I've failed to filter some excrement or remove any incidental likenesses. If so, I assure the resemblance is purely coincidental.

Hutch wrote:On another forum I frequent, they have a section to move posts that have denegrated to name-calling and Godwin-ing....

They call the subforum Abandon All Hope...

Michael Everett wrote:What's Godwin-ing?

Spacekiwi wrote:Effectively ending a conversation via a comparison to hitler/3rd reich.

Peke wrote:Ahhhh, now I have a name for that often-seen argument that demonizes all atheists (like me) by claiming that Hitler was an atheist himself.

cthia wrote:Um, I can see the unfairness of winning an argument, like so, on one end of the spectrum. But on the other end, what if the comparison is true?

Spacekiwi wrote:For the arguement,it doesnt matter if its true or not, its the fact that someone is claiming that by association to a topic, you are a nazi, and therefore your viewpoint is invalid. Its like saying that because someone is german/austrian like hitler, that their viewpoint is therefore automatically invalid, and so any further covnersation can only be on how much of a nazi they are. Its just a particular form of thread derailment, by changing a conversation into a denial of something irrelevant to the original discussion.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodwinsLaw

Bold is my own literary license - cthia


Exhibit A:

What if the significant ingredient in the comparison is true?

Spacekiwi wrote:⇒ For the argument, it doesnt matter if its true or not, ...

That, in effect, depends on the "objective truth" ... which is the "particular truth" that I have chosen to place on Exhibit B

Exhibit A ⊨ Exhibit B :⇔ Exhibit A

Spacekiwi cont...

...its the fact that someone is claiming that by association to a topic, you are a nazi, and therefore your viewpoint is invalid. Its like saying that because someone is german/austrian like hitler, that their viewpoint is therefore automatically invalid, and so any further covnersation can only be on how much of a nazi they are.

That is reprehensible, I agree. But it is not the corollary that I am considering. I am considering the "absolute truth" of a separate, yet specific comparison regarding Hitler's "emotional state" and not his character. As in, the absolute spawn of Hitler is as insane as Hitler himself and his many propaganda machines. An insane person, can truly give no sane argument.

At the crux of my caution, is the fact that in some very specific cases, such as Newton's Law, laws fail. And Godwin's Law fails at, at least one point in axiomatic space. And that is the point where a comparison is made to shed light on a poster who is truly insane - like Hitler.

Godwin's Law focuses on a comparison made for comparison's sake. That has no merit. By the intent of Godwin's Law, it is simply to try and avoid the conversation, save a losing argument, or derail a discussion - in which case, the comparison is apples and oranges to bananas, which renders it irrelevant to the conversation at hand and it should be overruled.

However, if the assertion highlights one's actual clinical insanity - the principal constituent of Hitler's character - then the comparison should be sustained.

Truly imagine trying to sanely converse with Hitler himself - as the conundrum faced by his many advisors.

peke wrote:Ahhhh, now I have a name for that often-seen argument that demonizes all atheists (like me) by claiming that Hitler was an atheist himself.

Claiming that one is a demon because he is an atheist is a logical fallacy. Atheism does not necessarily imply demonism.

Atheism ⊭ Demonism


Claiming someone's argument is insane because they are insane, as was Hitler himself, is logical.

Insanity → Insane

Consider this...

** The usage of Godwin's Law also has "Henderson's Law" as a corollary, referring to an observation by Joel Henderson that while Mike Godwin specifically stated this to pertain to "gratuitous Hitler-comparisons", Godwin's Law has been frivolously thrown at any comparison no matter how accurate or on-point.

Which suggests that Godwin himself understood the limitations of his law to be true only within the domain of the set {gratuitous Hitler-comparisons}. However, since Godwin's law was left incomplete, as in providing an actual set whereby the Tautology (T) is False, leaves the law to be misinterpreted and frivolously applied. As in...

T ⊄ {clinical insanity, non-gratuitous Hitler-comparisons}

It isn't enough to simply state that the function is only true in {gratuitous Hitler-comparisons} but must provide a set (range) where law fails. Yet in Godwin's defense, he was not attempting a formal or even an informal proof of his law. He generalized, which left far too much for idle and opportunistic minds to infer. I've attempted to alleviate that problem. Which follows that Godwin's Law is not incorrect, just incomplete.

It logically follows that one may not frivolously attribute Godwin's Law to an absolute comparison to Hitler that has merit, such as a relevant comparison to his mental state - whereby "gratuitous" has no merit. That would be as guilty as he who serves up irrelevant apples and oranges - as is the true essence of the meaning of Godwining. It would stink of hypocrisy.

Axiom of PlayDoh! : (Pardon me Plato!)

By the same token, trying to converse with, and make sense of, someone deemed to be insane, well, is itself insane.

** It is generally accepted that whoever is the first to play the "Hitler card" has lost the argument as well as any trace of respect, as having to resort to comparing your adversary to the most infamous mass-murdering dictator in history generally means you've run out of better arguments.

Which completely ignores the :case in which the weight of truth of the specific comparison becomes the most important piece of evidence to the defense, and also becomes much bigger than the original argument, e.g., when Johnnie Cochrane's assertions regarding the incendiary recordings of the DA's lead detective, Mark Fuhrman, in perjuring himself - made privy and exacerbated by the inexcusable and quite shockingly horrendous revelations of LA police officers' sentiments and brutalities and atrocities against African Americans - became bigger than the O.J. Simpson trial itself and may have been the final straw that broke the prosecution's back and irrevocably turned the tide against the prosecuting team, which should have convicted (a guilty - in my book) O.J. Simpson.


In summary, if comparing someone to Hitler is analogous to pointing out their actual insanity, then it does not support the "Godwin's Law" characterization of its use as an insult or derailment - and thus, whereby they are insane, should be sustained.

In this one particular light, the disconnect is in accepting reductio ad Hitlerum as the phrase to be coined in the sense originally meant by Godwin's Law. And it should be recoined as reductio ad Nazi. And the comparison in the sense of possessing "Hitler-like insanity" should be reductio ad Hitlerum.

Which infers reductio sad sanitarium which more clearly includes the set {Hitler, all insane}

This is similar in nature and implies that Godwin's Law is a general - yet incomplete - law, that ignores a special case, inasmuch as the General Theory of Relativity does not encompass the Special Theory of Relativity.

Each has merit as it is intended, but is indeed two distinct corollaries.

The definition of insanity is in doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The practice of insanity is in trying to make sense of that which is... or those who are.

Exhibit B:

TREATISE:

INTELLECTUAL SUICIDE describes the phenomena whereby the insanity of (committing oneself) to an attempt at a discussion with someone who is insane is like shoveling intellectual sewage in the middle of a shitIstorm. It's the only thing you can smell over the internet. An informal logical empirical proof is as follows...

This is your brain => E = MCSQUARE

This is your brain suspended in the middle of intellectual sewage →

EQN: INTELLECTUAL HE = HIMCSQUARE SEWAGE

Hidden from plain sight until the reduction of the equation...

HE = HIMCSQUARE
Factoring out "truth" E = MCSQUARE → H = HI

Dividing both sides by the cosmological incontinence associated with hemorrhoids (H) → I

[As constantly occurs from the pain of constipation associated with the constant interruptions by an ass]

substituting I in the original equation:

⇒ INTELLECTUAL I SEWAGE
[Where I is found in the middle of a shitIstorm]

⇒ ∃ Time(T) where I is bound by shit and storm

A more formal proof exists which describes the proof of the proof whereby substituting the derivative of the unknown quantity X' that lacks in the equation: {X' = XLAX} clears up the insanity of intellectual constipation ∴ cancelling out shitstorm.

Godwin's Law's missing case: {reductio sad sanitarium}

:Case
EQN: INTELLECTUAL HE = HIMCSQUARE SEWAGE

Layman's terms:
An element of the set {insane, ∅} = an [intellectual HE] who squarely sees sewage.

Implies [He who Sthinks inside box] ≡ Hitler

Contains the entire set of {insane, reductio ad Hitlerum, ∅ } which further reduces to...

! basket case: Hitler sad sanitarium → reductio sad sanitarium

∴ ∃! :CASE where [HITLERCARD] ↔ ASYLUM

[requests asylum from ≔ U in Hitler sad sanitariUm]

Axiom of Common Sense:

lim f (insanity + s) = Sanity(S)
s→Ø

common sense (s) = {ℝ, ∞}
where ℝ is the set of real numbers.
S = Sanity

*** IF s = Ø ⇔ brain on drugs [fried]

Afterword:
I apologize if you find yourself knee deep in the excrement which is the object of this entire treatise - and to highlight the [sa nm e] insanity of it all, by example, when a poster is insanely operating from his own plane of existence.

If the treatise fails to make sense, then you have naturally solved for the missing case in Godwin's Law whereby reasoning with insanity is senseless as the recoined corollary on exhibit shows...

:case {reductio sad sanitarium}

A measured apology for writing my own Afterword. It may infer delirium.

Disclaimer:
In the place of "insane" some may prefer the more politically correct definition long ago given by my young niece...

A few bricks short of a fireplace. No smoke coming out of the chimney. No fire in the hearth. And no wood to make any.

Of course, the problem herein is in obtaining proof of the quantifier to commit someone's mental state to clinical insanity, which is difficult, at best, to ascertain over the net.

However, oftentimes the proof is in the pudding, i.e., after ruling out the labium superius oris, if it smells like excrement and tastes like excrement. It's an emergency!

* ∀ [HITLERCARD] = [ACE] ¬ [JoKeR]

** Link near top of post.

*** https://youtu.be/3FtNm9CgA6U

.

Recently on these forums a comment was made referring to "subhumans". I remarked that was a word used by Goebbels and inappropriate.
I don't believe that I triggered Godwin's law, as my response was pertinent and not gratuitous.

Daryl wrote:Recently on these forums a comment was made referring to "subhumans". I remarked that was a word used by Goebbels and inappropriate.
I don't believe that I triggered Godwin's law, as my response was pertinent and not gratuitous.

It depends. If your deeming of his use of the word "subhuman" was made as an honorable caution to rudeness or some similar non-Godwins-Law-triggering reason, then indeed you may not have triggered Godwin's Law.

However, I am consuming the notion out of context. Whereby "subhuman" may be "significant" to the posters argument. It is up to the poster himself to defend - in the manner as I, but not necessarily so exhaustive - his stance. In this case, the fact that you used Goebbels name is not necessarily Godwining. It isn't a refutation of the validity of the posters entire argument, inasmuch as his bedside manners. Assuming I am correct regarding your intent. And without benefit of the full transcripts.

This totally reminds me of the fiasco of Johnnie Cochran trying to get Judge Ito to release the full transcripts (recordings) of Detective Mark Fuhrmans perjury. They were not released in their entirety. Only portions deemed important to the case at large.

Of course, in consideration of the damning recordings that were released, I have no uncertainty that the denial of the release of the full recordings were political in nature. It would have threatened this country's health at its very core.

You yourself are in a better position to judge and answer to your own intent, inasmuch as if your admonition was a thinly veiled comparison of the poster to Goebbel and was meant to crucify and discredit his argument because you attribute Goebbels character traits and psychological profile to the poster then you tripped Godwin's Law with both feet.

Again, I'm out of context. However, keep in mind that the poster just as well may have intended "subhuman" to be the significant ingredient in his argument, therefore appropriate for use. The burden of proof is on him. "Subhuman" may be "germane" to his argument without his association with the German. Just as Johnnie Cochran's highlighting of the N-word was in no part an inference to his own racism.

Godwin's Law requires a comparison and absolute characterization to/of "X" in order to disclaim one's argument. [Perhaps] you did not do that here. It appears that you simply cautioned someone about their manners. Again, I am operating without a skinsuit.

I don't believe that I triggered Godwin's law, as my response was pertinent and not gratuitous.

You are in a much better position to make that call than I; wherein it would be subject to refutation and objection by the poster. And depending on his "object of truth" and its overarching significance, may be sustained - in which case, you tripped the light fantastic.

At any rate, a disenfranchised third party as myself on the outside peeping in, is in no way even near being able to make a determination better than the posters, even with available transcripts. Because an "objective" truth may first be "subjective" as in my case where "a truth" was seen in my eyes first. Then explained and presented. The jury may not come in without the poster's input.



I caution the use of the word "pertinent" in the context of Godwin's Law. I greatly pondered its use in Exhibit A of my post but in the end quickly dismissed it after a more careful consideration....

What if the significant ingredient in the comparison is true?

i.e., I considered using "pertinent" as the adjective of ingredient instead of "significant."

However, many things are "pertinent" (and germane to the German Hitler) to the subject. But at one point - and only one point - in that domain, (regarding my particular "truth") is it significant, i.e., and that one point is an absolute clinical insanity...

Whereas [s = Ø] and not simply [s → Ø]


Consider some function of a circle drawn about the Origin (O) of a graph. All points in a specific region(s) within a particular quadrant(s), may be pertinent to the function. Yet only a specific point, the Origin itself is "significant" if it is the one point and only point where some other related function intersects or is tangent to the line or circle.

This thread is drawing loads of comments amongst friends. Some have suggested that I should submit...

Axiom of Common Sense:

lim f (insanity + s) = Sanity(S)
s→Ø

common sense (s) = {ℝ, ∞}
where ℝ is the set of real numbers.
S = Sanity

* IF s = Ø ⇔ brain on drugs [fried]

* https://youtu.be/3FtNm9CgA6U

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=co ... &FORM=IGRE
I had no idea there were so many quotes regarding common sense.


A few friends also want to make it into a T-shirt...

hmmm.


My young niece, in response to...

This Country Needs A...

DEPARTMENT of COMMON SENSE

...says that they tried, but couldn't keep it staffed.



Thanks to all of my friends for the compliments and discussion. But mostly for the confidence that I have a grasp on reality. LOL

:Case anyone is curious, as many of my friends, as to how I derived the equation, it just came to me during a moment of my delirium. It is just Common Sense.

Yabbut Hitler is so 20th-century. The new, improved version of Godwin-ing is to yell "racist!".

For example, the 2nd Amendment is racist - even though most historical attempts to violate it were intended to deny guns to specific racial or ethnic groups.

If more blacks break the law than whites, the laws are racist.

If more blacks are poor than whites (or more whites are rich), the economy is racist.

Requiring proof of citizenship before voting is racist, opposing the welfare state is racist, and every white American is racist, whether they realize it or not, even if they've never actually done anything racist.

As far as I could tell, racism was fading off to a quiet and well-deserved death up until a few years ago. Today the accusations are everywhere, shoved in our faces and trumpeted in media, whether there is any substance to them or not.

You can always tell when liberals are losing an argument; they yell "RACIST!" until their enemies give up in disgust.
------------------
Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects!

Imaginos1892 wrote:Yabbut Hitler is so 20th-century. The new, improved version of Godwin-ing is to yell "racist!".

For example, the 2nd Amendment is racist - even though most historical attempts to violate it were intended to deny guns to specific racial or ethnic groups.

If more blacks break the law than whites, the laws are racist.

If more blacks are poor than whites (or more whites are rich), the economy is racist.

Requiring proof of citizenship before voting is racist, opposing the welfare state is racist, and every white American is racist, whether they realize it or not, even if they've never actually done anything racist.

As far as I could tell, racism was fading off to a quiet and well-deserved death up until a few years ago. Today the accusations are everywhere, shoved in our faces and trumpeted in media, whether there is any substance to them or not.

You can always tell when liberals are losing an argument; they yell "RACIST!" until their enemies give up in disgust.
------------------
Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects!

Remains under the guise of reductio ad Nazi.

That which we call a thorny rose by any other name would still prick as deep.

Atheism ⊭ Demonism

As some of my friends, for those of you who may have qualms with this, I understand your reservations. Yet this isn't a religious discussion and it is beyond the scope of this thread and - from my personal experience - the stomachs of most of the posters here.

However, I do appreciate our off camera discussions.



I also must correct an oversight. Weird Harold provided a better link in the original Politics subforum thread in response to...

Weird Harold wrote:

Michael Everett wrote:What's Godwin-ing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Which covers an intensely bloated subject of memetics - which consumed way too much of my time on vacation with friends and cost me several drones from distraction!

To my astute friends...

{Hitler, all insane} under Exhibit A

does not become

{Hitler, all insane, Ø} until Exhibit B.

Axiom of Common Sense is not introduced until Exhibit B.

By then {Hitler, all insane, Ø}

is better represented by →

⊇ {! basket case} which more aptly includes →

{everyone missing one too many screws}

Committing oneself to a conversation with the insane, is itself insane.

Committing oneself to a conversation with the insane twice, is double jeopardy and Insanity² which is simply... INSANE.

cthia wrote:Committing oneself to a conversation with the insane, is itself insane.

Committing oneself to a conversation with the insane twice, is double jeopardy and Insanity² which is simply... INSANE.

OMG I have definitely had my head stuck up a steam turbine's [reheat valve] for way too long. Is sarcasm truly the brain's natural defense against stupid?