Especially over the past ten years in the Anglosphere and possibly as a result of the weaponisation of idiocy as a political device, people appear to be less satisfied with facts and logic and instead turn to more emotive and harder positions. Appeals to emotion from a political perspective are far more desirable because they don't actually need what you intend to assert to be true. As long as you yell something loud enough and often enough, then the madness of crowds can be used as a cheap fuel to drive your political rhetoric forward.
Unfortunately, that means that facts and logic have been thrown through the mincer. It also means that the language of logic has also been thrown through the same mincer and what has come out of the other end, is a state of affairs where words don't mean anything at all.
This is what has happened to the term of the "slippery slope argument". No longer does someone actually have to prove that an argument is a slippery slope argument, they merely have to say that something is a slippery slope argument; which immediately means that any constructive facts, logic and string of argument need not be entered into. In short, if you use a cricket bat and slam down upon the chessboard, then you win.
The slippery slope argument in rhetoric and logic, is an argument in which someone asserts that the initial action P, leads to Q, then R, then a series of events which eventually end up with X, Y, and Z. That first step P, which is minor, leads to a series of events which progressively get larger and larger; which eventually culminates in some significant and usually negative outcome or effect. In general, you never hear the the suggestion that something is a slippery slope if the expected outcome is something positive because people generally do not want to stop a positive thing from happening.
The suggestion that something is a slippery slope, is generally trotted out where the people who really want the thing to happen, accuse the person of suggesting that P leads to Q of fearmongering. Of course, you do have genuine slippery slope arguments where P leads to Q, then R, then eventually X, Y and Z, and the effects will be exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience. However, what I am increasingly finding is that as people move away from a respect of the truth and facts, then literally anything will be labelled as a slippery slope argument, even if someone is asserting that P directly leads to Q and not some chain of events in between.
I am very much informed by the legal character of the Man On The Clapham Omnibus and the Lady On The Strathfield Train. If we take a theoretical reasonable person who is of reasonably good character and of reasonably sound mind, could they reasonably foresee a thing happening as the result of a thing in action?
The problem with writing something off as a slippery slope argument is that it might be demonstrable that the first action will likely lead to an effect. It takes a deliberate fool to assert that actions have no consequences whatsoever and that P can not lead to any possibility Q. Of course, then this becomes a matter of reasonably evaluating Q and the relative strength of the argument of whether or not P leads to Q (perhaps through the exploration of motive, or perhaps the demonstration of process) but people accusing someone else of making a slippery slope argument, don't have time to look through the nuance window and instead prefer to close the curtains to all logic (including if there's a hurricane outside).
Invariably when you deal with people who have some agenda, an issue, or an opinion to push, that they are really really passionate about, then if you attempt to point out some possible consequence of Q, then because they have backed P to the hilt, they can not entertain any thought that there are any negative Q at all.
The problem with the slippery slope fallacy, is that it ain't necessarily so. If something is reasonably foreseeable as the result of something else, then that isn't some slippery slope fallacy but other things operating such as the law of unintended consequences or even perhaps just the usual laws of action and consequence.
The statement "If P then Q" doesn't immediately mean that Q is a stupid concept or that it is unreasonable to suspect that Q might happen. Q, Q' or Q" could all be possible outcomes of P. Some of those possible outcomes should act as a warning that maybe P isn't a good idea and just because you want to deny that P can have consequences or that you don't cars about the consequences of P, just as long as you get P to happen, is no reason to rule out Q, Q' or Q" from happening.
Elsewhere you see the accusation of the slippery slope fallacy being trotted out, it used in conjunction with the continuum fallacy. There might be all kinds of middle-ground possibilities but here the person making the accusation of the slippery slope has assumed from the outset that there is a discrete hard change from P to Z. P could very well have the effect of changing things subtly and Q, R, S etc. might all be logical and reasonably predictable outcomes of P. As a legal principle, middle-ground possibilities are acknowledged in all kinds of arguments and due to the formal nature and exhaustive demands that the legal environment makes, there is often very long-winded reasoning is provided for the likelihoods of various predicted outcomes.
If you dare ask the person if they actually know what a slippery slope is, then you will be likely met with a wall of abuse. Remember, their objective in invoking that a thing is a slippery slope argument is not to engage with any reasonable objections but rather to smash all opposition to their position. Invoking that something is a slippery slope argument is often just an attempt to cause all reasonable objections to stop.
It is not if P then Q, then R, then eventually X, Y, and Z.
It is not if P then Q.
It is just P!
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