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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Is the slippery slope really a fallacy?

It's an informal fallacy, which means it's all about whether there are other (usually unstated) assumptions doing the work. If you explain why the slope is slippery (e.g. it's lathered in grease), then that's not a fallacy but an argument. Most accusations of the slippery slope fallacy are just people deflecting the argument. It's actually very rare for someone to argue that because something has begun that it will inevitably escalate further like that's some general law of the universe, because nobody anywhere believes in such a law. They almost always think that there is some reason why the thing will escalate, though the reasons may not always be made explicit. The slippery slope fallacy is almost always bullshit.