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No, it's not true that slippery slopes are automatically fallacious, that's a misunderstanding of the fallacy. The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a
by hntrader 6y ago
No, it's not true that slippery slopes are automatically fallacious, that's a misunderstanding of the fallacy.
The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly implausible chain will play out with high probability.
The fallacy does not assert that slippery slopes don't exist, and the mere act of arguing that a plausible slippery slope has a nontrivial chance of occurring is certainly not the Slippery Slope Fallacy as it's formally defined. Saying that slippery slopes are inherently fallacious may be aptly labelled the "Slippery Slope Fallacy Fallacy".
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago> The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly implausible chain will play out with high probability. Isn't this exactly what I described in that comment? I'm confused. Or maybe I was just not clear in my writing. Re-emphasized: > not all things vaguely similar to previous paths to X result in X, obviously [=> even though some things do] Also, I didn't really introduce slippery slope as a strict logical fallacy. I said they were making a poor argument and identified it as being of slippery slope form. They responded to that talking about logical fallacies so we went on that tangent, but really I just found their specific instance not credibly inevitable.
- hntrader 6y agoI was just responding to the statement "Slippery slope is considered a fallacy", by saying that slippery slope arguments aren't necessarily fallacious, but it seems you largely agree with that already. I wasn't so much endorsing or commenting on the logic in the original comment.