Slippery Slopes · 3:22am Dec 14th, 2012
Not a grammar post for once!
Back when I was about sixteen or so, I used to mod a debate subform on a very small IPB board. It was a pretty cozy environment, one where everyone knew everyone else.
The thing is, even with people who aren't complete strangers, they still end up retreading the same arguments over and over and over again. Also, most of the arguments are STUPID.
I look back on that part of my life with fondness now, and I want to thank all the people there for making me the bitter and jaded person I am today. <3
After a while, I got so sick of the debate topics (HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GUYS GONNA FUCKING ARGUE ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE AND WHETHER GOD EXISTS?! STOP BRINGING UP HITLER! FUCKDAMNIT!) that I stopped contributing in the discussions and would, instead, jump on anyone (on any side of the debate) who started using fallacious arguments. Somehow, this got me a fancy pip and some banhammer privileges? idk.
I was going to reuse some of my experiences there as material for Twilight's second year in Darkest Before Dawn. I had it planned that she would start doing a lot of extra-curricular activities to pretty up her college applications and was going to have a chapter where she joined a debate club.
Such a terrible idea in retrospect.
I think it would have just turned into thinly-veiled ranting, much like what will follow the introductory section of this post:
Slippery Slope
If you partake in action A, then eventually you will end up partaking in (undesirable) action B through a series of smaller steps, therefore you should not partake in action A.
Example A:
Ida Praposar: I'm going out to have a smoke.
Lojika McPhallussy: You shouldn't smoke cigarettes. If you smoke tobacco you'll eventually want to start smoking marijuana, and then once you smoke marijuana you'll start wanting to do harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. If you smoke cigarettes you'll end up as a crack whore in the worst part of the city.
Example B:
Ida Praposar: I think we should raise the legal drinking age to 25.
Lojika McPhallussy: Don't you see? If you raise the drinking age to 25, what's stopping you from raising it to 30? to 50? to 64? Why not just bring back prohibition?
Technically this isn't always incorrect, but the more steps between action A and B, the more ridiculous this argument becomes. It's not too hard to see how shaving your left eyebrow could lead to shaving your right eyebrow (people look fucking weird with just one eyebrow, yo), but it requires a much greater leap to see the connection between shaving your left eyebrow and committing acts of pedophilia.
A handy tip when diagnosing this fallacy would be to try to connect the initial action and the final action while ignoring all the steps in-between. If you find the gap to be pretty darn ridiculous, then the person making this argument is probably guilty of using the slippery slope fallacy.
Just think of it like a slide in a playground, and everything becomes fun again! :D
Great explanation. This is one that has always confused me a little.
All I retained from this was "Twilight's second year in Darkest Before Dawn"... yes! *fistpump*
Or do I just not remember the story fully...
The title of this post made me sigh in irritation and prepare to, yet again, explain why the slippery slope is a fallacy, only to read it and find out that that's exactly what the post was. Huzzah!
Ahh, Godwin's law. Second only to yet another argument from ignorance. I kinda went through that phase on turbo-boosted rocket-skates. The God Delusion -> Dive into YouTube -> Engage on forums -> Learn the fallacies -> Get board and move on—all in about a year. It's a wonderful skillset to have, but it's only useful in debates if the other person accepts the same ground rules.
They never do.
-Scott
609863
Ye. The people who stay and "debate" for any longer than a year or so probably are those mm... "issues" people. Not that they're mentally unsound or anything, but they just have a lot of topics they've formed very strong opinions about and aren't willing to accept that other people might not feel the same way. They want to proselytise (not in a religious sense) and use "debating" as their venue to do so (because, obviously, no one will put up with that shit anywhere else). They're the same three or four people you see arguing back and forth in any major discussion, completely unwilling to back down or listen to any form of reason.
And dealing with them is so fucking exhausting.
I debated on whether or not to look at this blog, because usually these are grammar blogs. Not that there's anything wrong with those, (In fact, they help me a lot!) they're just tedious to read through! But as I read through it, ideas flew into my mind, bouncing off the cranium, in and out of the flesh! And then I read this:
And my heart skipped a beat. I thought I had finally forgot about one of the greatest pieces of work on Fimfiction. It would be the greatest, were it still alive. But now, I realize I can't completely forget about it. I can occasionally, but not permanently. It latched onto my heart, and when it died, I didn't know how my heart would continue pumping without it. But I did live without it. I can only shed so many tears over the loss of something, before I must accept it. Heh, I'm bringing up old topics and debates right now, aren't I? Oh, the irony.
609899 Well, it would be wrong to say that I'm completely out of it; I just pick my battles and my philosophies very carefully. Nowadays, I'm the kind of guy that prefers to explain why the question is invalid and walk off. If someone actually cares about the truth, they'll come after you and you can have friendly (but still heated) debate with someone who cares.