[mattlanger]

Godwin's Law, HackerNews edition: as a non-tech policy discussion grows longer, the probability of a comment thread devolving into an argument between competing ideas of libertarian vs. interventionist market theologies approaches 1.

[grourk]

Well, that's kind of the underlying point of the article and the discussion around it.

[mattlanger]

Agreed, I was just trying to jocularly comment on the Things That Don't Exactly Belong On Hacker News aspect of it by pointing out that those conversations always end up in the same place.

[mturmon]

And, in addition, these conversations tend to be rather shallow and un-anchored by fact. More an exhibition case for general philosophical predilections than a serious examination of the particular policy issue.

[sethg]

The tendency to degenerate into arguments over libertarianism predates Hacker News. Ron(?) Newman proposed it as “Newman’s Corollary to Godwin’s Law” over ten years ago.