Tag: adage

Posted in History & Literature

Headline

Posted on by Jinavie

With the advent of the internet, the media has become faster and more accessible than ever before. Nowadays, breaking news is reported within minutes and you can browse multiple different news agency at the click of a button. But speed and access has become a double-edged sword, with many articles following a trend of focussing less on the content (or the truth) and more on how sensational the headline is, so that more people will click on it (known as clickbait).

Sensational headlines have always been popular, particularly in tabloid journalism. Headlines such as “Are the government lying about event X?” or “Have scientists found the cure to cancer?” attract people as hypothetical questions allow journalists to report on something without conclusive facts or evidence. Luckily, there is an old journalistic adage that allows us to combat this.

Betteridge’s law of headlines was devised by technology journalist Ian Betteridge, based on an old journalistic principle. It states that: 

“Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no”. 

If you apply this law to the above sensational articles, then you can avoid wasting time reading an article that will add nothing to your knowledge.

Learning is not only about acquiring knowledge, but also knowing what “knowledge” to avoid.

image
Posted in Life & Happiness

Godwin’s Law

Posted on by Jinavie

In 1990 when the internet was still in its infancy, Mike Godwin observed something while browsing through internet forums. From his observations, he humorously coined the following adage: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. This essentially means that no matter what the topic of the online discussion may be, given enough time, someone will eventually make a comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.

For example, during a discussion about animal rights, someone may decide to post: “You know who else loved animals? Hitler.” No matter how unrelated the topic may be, someone will inevitably make a hyperbolic comparison to Hitler. It is also widely accepted that the moment this happens to a discussion, it is considered dead and the one who made the comparison loses the discussion. It should be noted that this law only applies to discussions not originally related to Hitler, the Nazis or totalitarian regimes and ideologies where the comparison to Hitler may be appropriate.

This law is closely related to a logical fallacy known as reductio ad Hitlerum, where someone tries to refute an opponent’s argument by comparing it to something Hitler would think or say. It is a crude, classless form of the ad hominem fallacy, where someone attacks the opponent personally rather than the argument itself. The reductio ad Hitlerum is extremely ineffective as in an intelligent discussion, such an effort would simply be considered childish and moronic.