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Comment Re:OK, but... (Score 1) 89

What do you mean "you should be able to explain"?

That's absurd. If you're talking to somebody who shares NONE of your cultural values, you can never convince them of anything. You have to start your argument from some point of agreement.

Hitler is used because he is the ONLY universally shared cultural value.

Comment even Godwin misunderstood Godwin's Law (Score 1) 89

Godwin's Law is true, but apparently even Godwin doesn't understand why.

People inevitably make Hitler comparisons because it's the only moral bedrock we have left. There is no other issue upon which we can all be expected to agree.

Here's how Internet discussions work:

I say "X is bad". Somebody disagrees, so I say "X is bad because Y is bad". Somebody says "but Y isn't bad", so I have to say "Y is bad because Z is bad". Given the vast diversity of the Internet, there's going to be somebody who says "but Z isn't bad". To make my argument I have to find some basic moral bedrock, a thing that is so bad that we can ALL agree it's bad. Hitler is the ONLY thing that fits that description, so eventually every discussion will get there. That's why Godwin's Law is true.

Godwin's Law is about the fact that humans don't agree about morality. No more, no less.

Comment failure (Score 1) 113

This was a bad demonstration of relativistic effects. All it really does is demonstrate the Doppler effect, and it does that poorly. People are evidently not warm, because they do not glow when infrared light becomes visible. Chimneys do, but so do shadows under roofs.

The huge mushrooms emit what, gamma rays? They emit light that is visible even when enormously red-shifted.

There is no Sun or sky. No campfires. No warm machinery. No radios. No flowers with UV patterns. Nothing familiar that will illustrate something interesting about the Doppler shift and the world of invisible light.

It's a nifty idea, but finish it before releasing it.

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