Why Slippery Slope Is a Logical Fallacy

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Hi all. Today, I want to talk about the gun control debate ... but I want to cover a larger issue at the same time.

I've seen a lot of gun debates on the internet lately. They all seem to go the same way. Observe.

Liberal: We don't want to ban all guns. We just want to keep guns away from people who have a history of impulsive behavior and emotional instability.
Conservative: Yeah, but this would be a slippery slope towards banning all guns.
Liberal: Slippery slope is a logical fallacy.
Conservative: Who told you that? RationalWiki? They think that everything is a logical fallacy. They just make up "logical fallacies" willy-nilly.

Today, I want to demonstrate that slippery slope is a real logical fallacy and not simply something that pseudo-intellectual internet philosophers have pulled out of their arses.

Let's pretend that slippery slope is a totally valid line of reasoning, and not a logical fallacy. This means that the following statements are true.

"If we keep guns legal, it will eventually be legal for ordinary people to buy bazookas and nuclear warheads."
"If we make same-sex marriage illegal, this will lead to the banning of all marriage and then the banning of all sexual intercourse."
"If we privatize social security, this will lead to the privatization of everything and then we will be living in ancapistan."
"If we start another war, the wars will just keep getting worse and worse until the whole universe is like Warhammer 40K."
"If America becomes more Christian, this will take us back to the Middle Ages and give the Catholic Church absolute power."
"Any sort of European pride is a slippery slope towards Nazism and slavery."
"Any man who looks at a women lustfully will eventually become a serial rapist who tortures women."
"Anti-vaxxers want to eventually make all medicine illegal."

That's why restricting guns won't lead to a total ban. That's why slippery slope is a fallacy.

Wow! Coming up with those examples was fun! Let's make more of them for the lulz! Can anyone think of any more?

Nitpicking against s/s annoys me. Most people are aware, or at least I hope they are, that s/s as necessary fallacy is a non-sequitur. If someone can demonstrate a clear probability that links in a causal chain WILL occur, the s/s is valid and non-fallacious.

I don’t think people commit fallacious s/s accidentally. Anyone who wants to be taken seriously in a philosophical debate will steer clear of it, while politicians and activists will purposefully lead off with it for emotional impact. It’s more a rhetorical device than a logical device.

But it’s also a fallacy to scream “SLIPPERY SLOPE! SLIPPERY SLOOOOOOOOPPPEEEEEE!! !! !!” just because an argument follows s/s form. The argument could be logically valid AND be a slippery slope.

The opposite argument to your gun rights example, that if you ban one form of weapon it necessarily leads to the ban of all weapons, is evidenced somewhat. The banning of firearms in the U.K., for example. In the US, regulation of specific types of arms is tempered by constitutional guarantees of rights of citizens to keep and bear them. Societal and political pressures together with form of government contribute to a chain reaction resulting in weapons bans, which varies depending on the system under which weapons are regulated.

Your test argument would most likely hold up under, say, a near-anarchic oligarchy. Basically a loosely organized feudal state run by thugs and a runaway weapons trade.

Correctamundo. Slippery slope has been abused. It's now a subset of "everything I don't like is fascism", ie. "every logical inference I don't like or hurts my argument is automatically slippery slope".


It is a bit of a joke. It should be renamed "Fashionable opinion wiki".

Really?

Are you implying that the society and the establishment are liberal and rationalistic?

RationalWiki has gone against the establishment several times. They were always against Trump, even when he was popular enough to get elected. They have been critical of Hillary Clinton, and have said positive things about Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky. Also, scientific rationalism isn't mainstream. Most people are still religious, and many non-religious people are into astrology, and other forms of unscientific tomfoolery.

The elites aren't really liberal or conservative. They are overwhelmingly pro-corporate, anti-environment and pro-war, but they don't really care about conservative values beyond that ... though they pretend to.

Then we have the general public. They are, for the most part, a pack of small-minded, celebrity worshipping, TV watching airheads. Hopefully, the internet will turn this around and put an end to the repulsive cancer that is television.

No, they like to think they are. Society, fashion, Hollywood, the Washington establishment etc. are still vaguely neoliberal, socially liberal, morally liberal and anti-Trump. Despite Trump's election, the real culture war is yet to come, he's more of a warm up. We are a long way from conservative traditionalism being fashionable.
A clever commentator said that Trump, far from being the last gasp of Christian Conservatism, may actually be the last gasp of the Democratic Left in America, Trump being hopelessly moderate and restrained (no, really).


I think you are a bit too optimistic. The internet is stage 4 cancer to TV's stage 3.

Be England
Ban guns
Then have to ban knives
Them have to ban potato pealers

No obviously no such thing as the slippery slope
But let's do another example

Be American
Have gay rights movement
Have gay marriage
Having open transgenderism be widely supported

No totally no slippery slope
I'm not sure how one could honestly look at the latter and not see the phenomenon of a slope
Just a decade ago the idea that society would be celebrating a male athlete becoming a women would have been unthinkable

I agree with you when you say that society as a whole is neoliberal.

I suppose that modern society is quite morally liberal ... but society is only morally liberal in a shallow sort of way. The masses rarely try to apply enlightened liberal values to the economy or foreign policy.

I suppose that society is anti-Trump, but the establishment is pro-trump. This is where society and the establishment differ.

Hollywood isn't really liberal or conservative. I get what you are saying. Movies nowadays are full of SJW pandering ... but movies are also full of product placement, which is a product of capitalism.

There are also plenty of Hollywood movies nowadays that are pretty right-wing. There has been a surge of Christian movies lately such as God's Not Dead and its sequels. Also, Michael Bay is still pretty influential ... and his movies shamelessly glorify the US military.



Given that there is so much beauty in the scientific worldview, I am confident that rationalism will ultimately win.

I'm not saying that traditionalism should be outlawed. I am confident that the masses will eventually make the right choice. Hopefully, this will happen in my lifetime.



... and yet the most popular politician in America right now is Bernie Sanders.



Why do you say this? Are you implying that the internet is a threat to traditional values?

If the internet is a threat to traditional values (and I do believe that it is) then traditional values are ultimately doomed. Nothing can stop the spread of the internet at this point. The world of the future will be - for better or for worse - a product of the internet and internet culture.

I other words, the future is going to include even more, "slutwalks", more trans pride, and more #metoo.

If you aren't into that sort of thing, you could always go live in the woods. I might actually do that when I'm older. In the past, I have made it clear that the beauty of the natural world is my primary motivator. I live to observe its beauty and be dazzled by it. That's why I choose to live, despite the fact that I live in a godless universe.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of political correctness or the hypersexual lifestyle. I just understand that I will have to collaborate with those sorts of people if I am going to protect the environment from destruction.

Yeah ... but the "slippery slope" people claim that LGBT rights will lead to the legalisation of child sex abuse.

I see no sign of this ever happening. The biggest pedophilia apologists nowadays seem to be the "incels" and the an-caps, both of which are right-leaning.

Well, in this case you have the problem of challenging sexual norms and redefining orientation and gender. Zoophilia, pedophilia, and other paraphilias might well also be orientations or genders. Honestly, it looks to me like the two terms are interchangeable sometimes (yes, I know the difference). If homosexuality is ok, why not sex with pets? And you can’t make it about consent because a dog in heat consents, and males are fine with pretty much whatever hole they can find. Why not incest? If two adults consent, what business does anyone have with what you do in your bedroom? Young people have sex with each other, so if a young person is well aware of the risks and consequences, and if an adult is not abusing a position of authority and trust, why not reconsider AOC laws?

In this case, it’s less slippery slope, because no, we are conditioned to be hypersensitive to certain taboos and the mistreatment of children without once asking what our moral foundation really is. It’s really ad hoc morality with a dash of situational ethics. It CAN lead to a slippery slope because the causal chain is possible and plausible. But there hasn’t been any actual demonstration that “if a, then ... z”. We don’t know the actual probability of, say, gay marriage actually leading to child abuse.

However, if you allow for extra-Hetero orientation, fluid gender, shifting attitudes on consent, drug use, etc., and no objective basis for morality, then things like strict AOC laws with tight penalties/registering offenders, what you do with your pet that is technically your property, and what you do with a niece close to your age or with a sibling as long as you are both consenting adults...it’s all ad hoc.

It’s ad hoc because you have to answer the question of why one thing is good and moral but the other is not. And there’s just never a satisfying rational answer for that.

I'm pretty sure that no animal would ever have sex with a human under its own free will.

Therefore, sex with animals is rape.



Really? I've never known a dog who seriously wanted to have sex with a human.



I'm actually going to agree with that. Plenty of things that are grosser than incest (to me) are still legal.



Pretty much all adults who have sex with minors are just abusing their position of authority. There's no reason to legalize it.



Human nature cannot be altered infinitely. Lenin found that out the hard way.

So, no, liberal morality won't lead to a perpetual perversion slope.



I already covered this. Humans have a natural core. We aren't entirely products of society. There is a moral core in humanity that will prevent mass rape.

By the way, the "noble knights" of the middle ages often raped peasant women. The concept of marital rape was not a thing until very recently. What makes you think that religion can be used to enforce the concept of sexual consent?

Also, nothing in the Bible is against drug use. In fact, many of the heroes of the Bible loved their booze. Jesus had the ability to make wine and people called that a miracle.



Human nature makes certain things right and wrong.

Look at liberal Christians. They disregard all the parts of the Bible that feel "mean" to them ... but if all morality comes from the Bible, why do some people think that the Bible is cruel? Why are people disgusted when they read about what the Israelites did to the Canaanites? Clearly, humans have a moral instinct.

Zoophilia can be viewed either as making use of private property, which is nobody’s business save the owner of the pet, or it’s consensual. Male dogs are known to be sexually attracted to human females. Either way, it’s irrelevant. When you say one thing is moral and another isn’t, it’s ad hoc.

Liberal “morality” probably won’t lead to a slippery slope, but that’s because it has an objective base. Claims otherwise are ad hoc.

I didn’t bring up the Bible this time. You did. Can you explain this “moral instinct” in terms that aren’t ad hoc?