[LeratoAustini]

I don't understand how Godwin's rule is useful. Its only effect on arguments is that on top of the inevitable "Hitler" comment you now also get an inevitable "Godwin" follow-up, usually delivered with the air of having somehow won the argument. It's beyond redundant IMO.

[zimpenfish]

There's no such thing as "Godwin's Rule" - it's "Godwin's Law" and it said nothing about winning arguments; only that as the length of an argument increased, the probability that a comparison with the Nazis would appear approached 1.

You can't invoke it either. It's a statistical observation.

[wu-ikkyu]

How is that a useful observation, though?

As the length of any internet argument grows, the probability of anything being said would approach 1.

[marcus_holmes]

I don't know about anyone else, but unless the discussion is actually historical in nature, then the point at which I find a discussion ceases to be interesting and reverts to name-calling is about the point that Godwin's Law appears.

[ionised]

That's because people abuse Godwin's law (or what they think it is) to shut down discussion.

Taken from Wikipedia;

Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by American lawyer, journalist and author Glenn Greenwald.

Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust", Godwin has written. In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump.