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OP posted as an attempt to "pop filter bubbles" and I just want to say that for people outside the conservative filter bubble the argumentative form of proposing a slippery slope and then assuming we'll inevitably slide down it to the bottom is not highly persuasive. The pro-life movement (which has had a strong of recent successes in the U.S.) doesn't say "we demand a return to the 1920s status quo on contraception because anything else is an inevitable slippery slope to infanticide" because they know that isn't actually persuasive to the public.
I'm not going to spend my time trying to disabuse religious conservatives of their belief that society slides down every slippery slope they can imagine. I do hope I can get you all to understand it's an eccentric aspect of your worldview and you're not popping filter bubbles by telling everyone else that you can imagine slippery slopes without providing evidence we're actually sliding down them.
What's wrong with slippery slope arguments? Would you also dismiss concerns of global warming ("climate change") as a slippery slope argument? Or the Nazi bar argument? It's just arguing from basic causality. It shouldn't be taken less seriously to argue that if X happens, then Y, and then if Y, then Z. Especially when there doesn't seem to be a consistent limiting principle that would stop the chain of causality from continuing to Z. You are free to disagree on the specifics on X, Y and Z, but just dismissing arguments of this form out of hand doesn't seem conducive to discussion.
Proposing a plausible sounding chain of causation is cheap and easy and only persuasive to people who already share your beliefs about how complex social dynamics will inevitably play out. I will note that when the climate people propose "more CO2 -> higher average global temperature -> economic/environmental/humanitarian catastrophe" they then go on to spend tremendous resources measuring the global average temperature and developing cyclical climate models and attempt to show that the increased number of extreme weather events is related to the rising average global temperature.
In this thread anti-MAID people are proposing "terminal cancer patients and people with degenerative neurological conditions using MAID -> healthy old people using MAID because of new social norms about not being a burden -> depressed 25 year olds killing themselves" (x->y->z). I think that's a plausible chain of events, but I don't think it's the only possible way for a complex social change to play out, so I am asking for evidence that y and z are happening at increased rates relative to the past. No one in this thread has bothered to answer me with numbers. I've gotten "x->y->z is plausible because a->b->c in the past" or "isn't the general form x->y->z valid" or "x is increasing" but no one is digging into the stats to tell me what's going on with y and z.
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Sure looks like a slope. Sure looks like it's trending downhill. Sure looks like heading downhill is accelerating.
But no, don't believe your lying eyes, that's not slippery and it's not a slope!
I'm not even disagreeing with you all that this is a potentially slippery slope I'm just asking for any sort of numerical evidence that we're sliding (young people or healthy old people are using MAID more) and no one has bothered to provide it. I'm just supposed to "believe my eyes" about statistical trends in the Canadian medical system, what?
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