Mike S. also chimed in on my flame war, introducing Godwin’s Law, which states that:
- in any Internet flame war, as soon as someone makes an analogy to the Nazis, the discussion is over, and the person who made the analogy has lost the argument.
- as the length of the flame war increases, the probability of the introduction of Nazi analogies approaches one.
Of course, you can’t actually invoke Godwin’s Law. You can’t say "you brought up the Nazis, the discussion is over, I win." But when somebody loses it and launches an ad hominem attack, you just walk away.
Now, it’s not like anyone actually brought up the Nazi’s in the flame war I talked about earlier, but the broader principle, which is what I gleaned onto, is that the person who launches an ad hominem attack looks like an idiot. So the best strategy is to walk away, rather than respond in kind.