3 ms·

The slippery slope fallacy isn't really a fallacy. I've been thinking this for awhile now. There are certain systems which are somewhat hazy or flubbery by nat

The slippery slope fallacy isn't really a fallacy. I've been thinking this for awhile now. There are certain systems which are somewhat hazy or flubbery by nature. Legal and political systems fit into this category. Systems of logic and mathematics have more sharply delimited values for truth or falsity. Science is more sharply delimited, but even here, you see some of the haziness creep in. Is this particular grain of sand Ediacaran or Cambrian? There may be no way of saying, one way or another. However, that also isn't of particular import, one way or another. Legal and political systems are particularly bad, since they tend to have very fuzzy distinctions combined with very significant consequences.

musage 9y ago
> Systems of logic and mathematics have more sharply delimited values for truth or falsity. Within them sure, but they don't actually exist in a vacuum. It's like saying Sim City is better than the messy real world because it follows very simple rules 100% -- without that messy real world, there would be no Sim City either, the simulation is not really closed off from the physical world surrounding it. > From a philosophical viewpoint, the danger inherent in the new reality of mankind seems to be that this unity, based on the technical means of communication and violence, destroys all national traditions and buries the authentic origins of all human existence. This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations. Its result would be a shallowness that would transform man, as we have known him in five thousand years of recorded history, beyond recognition. It would be more than mere superficiality; it would be as though the whole dimension of depth, without which human thought, even on the mere level of technical invention, could not exist, would simply disappear. This leveling down would be much more radical than the leveling to the lowest common denominator; it would ultimately arrive at a denominator of which we have hardly any notion today. > As long as one conceives of truth as separate and distinct from its expression, as something which by itself is uncommunicative and neither communicates itself to reason nor appeals to "existential" experience, it is almost impossible not to believe that this destructive process will inevitably be triggered off by the sheer automatism of technology which made the world one and, in a sense, united mankind. It looks as though the historical pasts of the-nations, in their utter diversity and disparity, in their confusing variety and bewildering strangeness for each other, are nothing but obstacles on the road to a horridly shallow unity. This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive. Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth. -- Hannah Arendt, "Men in Dark Times"

musage 9y ago

> Systems of logic and mathematics have more sharply delimited values for truth or falsity. Within them sure, but they don't actually exist in a vacuum. It's like saying Sim City is better than the messy real world because it follows very simple rules 100% -- without that messy real world, there would be no Sim City either, the simulation is not really closed off from the physical world surrounding it. > From a philosophical viewpoint, the danger inherent in the new reality of mankind seems to be that this unity, based on the technical means of communication and violence, destroys all national traditions and buries the authentic origins of all human existence. This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations. Its result would be a shallowness that would transform man, as we have known him in five thousand years of recorded history, beyond recognition. It would be more than mere superficiality; it would be as though the whole dimension of depth, without which human thought, even on the mere level of technical invention, could not exist, would simply disappear. This leveling down would be much more radical than the leveling to the lowest common denominator; it would ultimately arrive at a denominator of which we have hardly any notion today. > As long as one conceives of truth as separate and distinct from its expression, as something which by itself is uncommunicative and neither communicates itself to reason nor appeals to "existential" experience, it is almost impossible not to believe that this destructive process will inevitably be triggered off by the sheer automatism of technology which made the world one and, in a sense, united mankind. It looks as though the historical pasts of the-nations, in their utter diversity and disparity, in their confusing variety and bewildering strangeness for each other, are nothing but obstacles on the road to a horridly shallow unity. This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive. Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth. -- Hannah Arendt, "Men in Dark Times"