Logic and the Rules of the Internet

Greetings,

While there not, of course, official rules of the internet, there exists a set of unofficial rules; not all of them originated on the internet, but many are constantly referenced. I'm not going to post the full list here-- not all of them are likely to be appropriate for a blog post-- but some of them are at least mildly philosophically interesting.

The first rule we'll look at is the Danth's Law. This law states, "if you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.” In other words, if it is not obvious and noncontroversial that you have proven your point, and yet you state that you have proven your point, the odds are good that you have already shown the weakness of your argument, and are past the point of no return. If the validity of your argument is not obvious from the argument itself, it is invalid; if your argument's form and content is insufficient to have achieved validity, asserting that it is valid will make it necessarily invalid.

Certain rules are numbered, due to their longstanding solidarity with message-board subculture, such as "Rule 14": "Do not argue with trolls-- it means they win". A "troll" is one who posts intentionally inflammatory material and/or responses, often ignoring basic logical principles such as validity, coherency, and relevancy. No logical argument, no matter how carefully constructed, can be valid if one denies the basic axioms of the logical system one works in. Trolls, who often make fallacious arguments such as Reductio ad Hitlerum (described below), do not hold the philosophical motivations of the pursuit of truth or even coherency; rather, they seek either to win or to create a reaction. Thus, do not engage in a philosophical debate with one who does not act in good faith; you won't be productive, and will probably just end up frustrated.

Another rule is Godwin's Law, originally stated by Mike Godwin in 1990, which claims that, "as a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." The reason? Across the internet, people are less personally accountable for their statements, and thus are less likely to concede to their opponents' arguments. Thus, a universal absolute is difficult to find. While individuals certainly exist who, online, would deny that the Nazis were in fact "evil", it is one of the few relatively non-controversial premises in an online argument. Therefore, it is likely to be used when there is no common ground.

A closely related rule was actually stated by Leo Strauss in the 1950's, which is Reductio ad Hitlerum, which argues that, "If Hitler liked P, then P is bad, because the Nazi's were bad", or, "If Nazis liked P, then P is bad, because the Nazis were bad." This actually seems to be a problem with the "is" function-- the "is of identity" versus the "is of predication. "Bachelors are unmarried men" is an example of the "is of identity"-- A is the same as B. "Nazi's are bad", however, is the "is of predication"-- B is merely a property of A. The Reductio ad Hitlerum argument states, [Nazis=Bad], [Nazis=(One who likes P)], therefore [(One who likes P)=Bad]. The arguer is mistaking the "is of predication" to be the "is of predication" (and vice versa). Some philosophical training on the differences between the two should be sufficient to show why such arguments are fallacious.


I want to credit an excellent article by the Telegraph for compiling many of these "laws", as well as several others I did not talk about. If you're interested, definitely worth a read. As well, a simple search for "rules of the internet" will yield a fairly solid list, with some minor variations depending on whose list it is.