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Of course I do not believe it the way you portray it. It is called a 'sliding scale' for a reason, my friend. A 'slippery slope'[0], if you will. Completely dif

Of course I do not believe it the way you portray it. It is called a 'sliding scale' for a reason, my friend. A 'slippery slope'[0], if you will. Completely different from 'directly comparable'. At the top of the slope, it's "merely firmware, what is the problem?". At the bottom of the slope are warcrimes and genocide. It is very hard to stop sliding down a slippery slope once you've started. So when you disallow Linux on a laptop you are very much at the top of the slope. And there is a long way to go. But my, oh my, it sure is slippery. Because we live in a digital age. More and more so. And in this age, there is no way to have 'checks and balances' without access to the source code of the software. And without checks and balances, it is very hard to have Separation of Powers[1]. Interestingly enough, I've found that survivors of WW2 tend to understand this better than most. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers

dalke 10y ago
There's no need for every slippery slope argument to make an allusion to the genocides committed by the Nazis. Otherwise, "my friend", one invites analogies to Godwin's law, and rejection out of hand for using a reductio ad Hitlerum. People make slippery slope arguments all the time, but often (and quoting your [0]), "as a form of fear mongering, in which the probable consequences of a given action are exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. In a non-fallacious sense, including use as a legal principle, a middle-ground possibility is acknowledged, and reasoning is provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome." What was missing, in the recasting of Niemöller's poem, was the 'reasoning ... provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome'.

dalke 10y ago

There's no need for every slippery slope argument to make an allusion to the genocides committed by the Nazis. Otherwise, "my friend", one invites analogies to Godwin's law, and rejection out of hand for using a reductio ad Hitlerum. People make slippery slope arguments all the time, but often (and quoting your [0]), "as a form of fear mongering, in which the probable consequences of a given action are exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. In a non-fallacious sense, including use as a legal principle, a middle-ground possibility is acknowledged, and reasoning is provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome." What was missing, in the recasting of Niemöller's poem, was the 'reasoning ... provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome'.