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Notes -
Is the slippery slope really a fallacy?
A story from Canada today that, by its very nature, maximizes heat. I will try to keep my own emotions about this story in check. Sitting at the intersection of gay rights, abortion rights, surrogacy rights, and ultimately the violence upon which all government force is founded, I bring you: Couple sues surrogate who refused to abort their baby over a minor birth defect
https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/world-news/couple-sues-surrogate-who-refused-to-abort-their-baby-over-a-minor-birth-defect/
Long story short, the baby had a minor heart defect
(the article doesn't specify what)and a cleft palate, and the adoptive men wish their now two year old child had been murdered and are suing the birth mother for failing to do so (there are also claims that she failed to keep them informed in a timely manner about these issues). Last I'll say of my own emotions on this is that this strikes me as outright demonic behavior and if I say anything more about my feelings I'm going to drift into fedposting so I'll stop here.The main point I can take away from this is that all of the Christian right that warned about various slippery slopes have been validated over, and over, and over again. The slippery slope is technically a fallacy, yes. But Christians repeatedly pointed out "There is no limiting principle here, and the arguments you nake to support degenerate behavior X are just as applicable to degenerate behaviors Y and Z and there is nothing except public sentiment (and not even that if a judge somewhere says otherwise) preventing the awful things we're talking about from becoming reality."
For those who lived through the culture wars over abortion, gay rights, and similar issues, have your feelings on the matter changed in anyway whatsoever over the last decade or two, and in which direction? And why, if you're able to articulate. For me at least, to quote the meme an old friend shared in our edgy groupchat the other day, "Upon further consideration I have decided to become more extreme in my religious beliefs".
It is absolutely a fallacy, but one that can be overcome with a bare modicum of evidence. Especially when you can point towards recent historical precedent and/or a smaller scale examples of said slope occurring.
So I view the slippery slope fallacy as a call to provide some actual evidence of the slope's existence, and delivery of such evidence then shifts burden back to the other party.
The sort of argument I look for to completely refute a Slippery Slope argument is "yes we're doing [X] which creates the risk of [Y] but we have created [Z] safeguard as a means of preventing a further slide into disaster." Cutting off the tail risk and arresting the fall, and creating a path to climb back up the slope if we actually slip.
But too often the safeguard is mostly for show is or is under-powered compared to the danger itself. Adding a gambling addiction hotline number to sports gambling ads is woefully inadequate, for example.
In any event, one should always look for Skin in the Game on the part of the person defending the slope in question. "If we go tumbling over the edge into oblivion, you're strapped to us so you'll take the fall too, right?"
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