4 ms·

slippery slope

by rangibaby 9y ago

slippery slope

dogecoinbase 9y ago
Literally a fallacy. You just named a fallacy as an attempt at argument.
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  Slippery slope is not a fallacy. It's a real phenomenon in certain cases. It does, however, have to be proved relevant to any given question, which is GP's real offense.
  - dogecoinbase 9y ago
    Yes, this is why it's a fallacy. By the time you've justified a slippery slope argument, you have made an independent argument for your point that has nothing to do with the idea of a "slippery slope". Calling something a slippery slope without an additional complete argument is the slippery slope fallacy.
    - andrewflnr 9y ago
      > ...you have made an independent argument for your point that has nothing to do with the idea of a "slippery slope". Um, no, it probably does. Slippery slopes happen when there's unintended consequences embedded in the assumptions behind a proposition someone is putting forward, and there are people with an interest in pushing for them to be realized. Sometimes you talk about this in your argument; bam, slippery slope argument. To try to name a "fallacy" after this rather useful concept, when the "fallacy" is just the boring case of failing to make an argument at all, is useless confusion at best.
bpicolo 9y ago
I don't think Nazis are anywhere near the slope.
kelnos 9y ago
I really dislike the perfunctory "slippery slope" type argument. It's never an argument not to do something; it's merely a warning to make sure that you don't use an action as a stepping stone to taking more extreme actions. Saying that banning certain things is a slippery slope, and using that excuse to never ban things, means that it's ok to allow truly horrendous things to happen, just because of fear of overreach. When we say we have freedom of speech, but then in the next sentence remind people that you can't yell "fire!" in a crowded space, we recognize that restricting some speech can be a slippery slope, but we do so anyway because not doing so would be much worse.
- sk5t 9y ago
  Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not generally recognized as political speech. At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence?
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence? Nobody is banning Nazi speech in America. Private citizens are just saying they don't want to be part of it. As many others have said, the Daily Stormer will find name servers and hosting partners in the same part of the Internet that brings up spam and scam.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    > At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence? I'm not saying it _is_ acceptable to do that. But we are actually talking about political speech that incites people to violence, and I'm ok with banning that. But -- we're not even talking about _that_ here. We're not talking about a government restricting speech, and we're not even talking about an essential, monopolistic company removing a party's only avenue to speech[1]. We're talking about a non-essential internet corporation (for which there are many alternatives!) deciding they don't want to help a hate group spread their message. [1] If their single-option ISP cut them off, we'd probably be having a very different discussion.
dang 9y ago
Would you please not post like this here? Especially on divisive topics. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032574 and marked it off-topic.

slippery slope

dogecoinbase 9y ago

Literally a fallacy. You just named a fallacy as an attempt at argument.

andrewflnr 9y ago
Slippery slope is not a fallacy. It's a real phenomenon in certain cases. It does, however, have to be proved relevant to any given question, which is GP's real offense.
- dogecoinbase 9y ago
  Yes, this is why it's a fallacy. By the time you've justified a slippery slope argument, you have made an independent argument for your point that has nothing to do with the idea of a "slippery slope". Calling something a slippery slope without an additional complete argument is the slippery slope fallacy.
  - andrewflnr 9y ago
    > ...you have made an independent argument for your point that has nothing to do with the idea of a "slippery slope". Um, no, it probably does. Slippery slopes happen when there's unintended consequences embedded in the assumptions behind a proposition someone is putting forward, and there are people with an interest in pushing for them to be realized. Sometimes you talk about this in your argument; bam, slippery slope argument. To try to name a "fallacy" after this rather useful concept, when the "fallacy" is just the boring case of failing to make an argument at all, is useless confusion at best.

bpicolo 9y ago

I don't think Nazis are anywhere near the slope.

kelnos 9y ago

I really dislike the perfunctory "slippery slope" type argument. It's never an argument not to do something; it's merely a warning to make sure that you don't use an action as a stepping stone to taking more extreme actions. Saying that banning certain things is a slippery slope, and using that excuse to never ban things, means that it's ok to allow truly horrendous things to happen, just because of fear of overreach. When we say we have freedom of speech, but then in the next sentence remind people that you can't yell "fire!" in a crowded space, we recognize that restricting some speech can be a slippery slope, but we do so anyway because not doing so would be much worse.

sk5t 9y ago
Yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not generally recognized as political speech. At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence? Nobody is banning Nazi speech in America. Private citizens are just saying they don't want to be part of it. As many others have said, the Daily Stormer will find name servers and hosting partners in the same part of the Internet that brings up spam and scam.
- kelnos 9y ago
  > At what point is it acceptable to ban unpopular political speech, provided that speech is not a direct incitement to riot/violence? I'm not saying it _is_ acceptable to do that. But we are actually talking about political speech that incites people to violence, and I'm ok with banning that. But -- we're not even talking about _that_ here. We're not talking about a government restricting speech, and we're not even talking about an essential, monopolistic company removing a party's only avenue to speech[1]. We're talking about a non-essential internet corporation (for which there are many alternatives!) deciding they don't want to help a hate group spread their message. [1] If their single-option ISP cut them off, we'd probably be having a very different discussion.

dang 9y ago

Would you please not post like this here? Especially on divisive topics. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032574 and marked it off-topic.