For my own understanding, how does slippery slope not equal cause and effect (and consequent effect)?
Each step after the first leading all of the way the final, horrible outcome, would have to be easier and more inevitiable than the step before it.
Or as Squink pointed out. There must be a positive feedback, and that feedback must continue all the way to the end.
This is why the whole gun-control slippery slope, for instance, is a fallacy. There is no positive feedback through the whole path, in fact, there is negative feedback that kicks in once gun restrictions begin to appear unreasonable to the majority.
Anyone for the ‘slippery valley’ argument?
It seems to me these types of gun control, once implemented, would not be reveresed. This certainly supports the slippery slope argument. Also, one generation removed would be used to gun control which would allow for even tighter restrictions and so on… and so on…
To rephrase Scylla’s point rather pedantically a slippery slope can be defined as a variable whose rate of increase increases with its magnitude (as with the speed of a falling object) or whose second partial derivative is positive.
This way of putting it isn’t completely pedantic because it reminds us that a “slippery slope” can be mathematically defined and in data-intensive fields especially in the natural sciences it can be measured. If I understand things correctly a lot of chaos theory ,for instance,deals with identifying “slippery slopes” or “non-linear dynamics” from statistical data.
The problem with political debates is that it is seldom possible to measure these things statistically with any degree of accuracy. Still it is possible to demand that at least qualitatively people who use slippery slope arguments provide reasonable evidence that of the magnitude of the slope they are talking about.
Overall “slippery slope” is best thought of as a name for a particular type of argument rather than the argument itself. It tells you what kind of argument the other guy is trying to make but he still has to provide the reasoning.
In a sense “slippery slope” is similar to “apples and oranges” which some people confuse for an argument when it is really a name for a particular type of argument.
Why? A compromise, by definition, is simply a lesser gaining from each side of an issue, i.e.- both sides get something that they want (supposedly). Since this stemmed from Gun Control (and Gun Control has been mentioned several times), I should point out that many Pro-Gun advocates feel that most “compromises” are either lopsided (they are asked to give more than they take), or the compromises are called as such, but really aren’t.
If you have enough lopsided compromises, or false compromises, in a chain, you have - surprise! - a Slippery Slope… a series of legislation/actions that continually benefit one side and burden the other. Skeptical? Then answer me this… when was the last time a piece of Gun Legislation was passed that gave MORE freedom (gunwise) to gun owners? If it truly was a “compromise”, you’d think there’d be something…
Over in General Questions, in this thread, C K Dexter Haven posted this gem:
To which I answer: Gun laws ARE a slippery slope. Look at the mass of laws that have been passed since 1930. Reasonable controls were met, and surpassed, before I was even born. And still we have more and more laws on the books and pending. And it’s always “just this little bit…it’s only ‘common sense’ regulation!”
It started with “You don’t need a machine gun! Who needs 900 rounds per minute to hunt deer? Look, gangsters use machine guns. Are you a gangster? No? Good, they’re now illegal.”
Then it was “We don’t know who’s buying them. So, the FBI needs to have a record of every purchase, along with picture ID. You’re not going to use it for anything illegal, right? You have nothing to hide? Well, then you have nothing to worry about! Don’t worry, we’ll destroy the records.”
Next it was “Well, we don’t know what’s being done with those guns, and since we have the records, we might as well keep them on file for a little while. Just to aid in crime fighting. You’re no criminal, right? Then don’t worry!”
That was soon followed by “Too many crimes are committed with ‘Saturday Night Specials’, so we need to do something. Most people buy a cheap gun, kill somebody and throw it away. So, any gun made with inexpensive materials (melting point less than 800 degrees) is now illegal. After all, you don’t want a cheaply made, low quality gun, right? You want a good gun. It’s all in your best interests.”
Then it was “Too many people go buy a gun in the heat of the moment, then go home and shoot their wives. So you need a cooling-off period. You can’t get a gun without waiting up to 5 days for a background check. We need to make sure you’re not violent [nevermind that spur of the moment violence doesn’t show up on a background check] and give you a few days to calm down so you don’t make a mistake!”
Finally we were told “You don’t need high capacity magazines or scary looking rifles for hunting! Since we all know that you only use your guns to hunt, you don’t have any problem with that, right? wink wink, nudge nudge And only terrorists and right-wing wackos have rifles that look like machine guns. So folding stocks, pistol grip stocks, silencers, flash suppressors, anything that can be fitted with the above, and all magazines that hold more than ten shots are now illegal to make. Oh, no, we aren’t banning them, we’re just making it illegal to manufacture or import new ones. Because they’re ‘assault weapons’. What does it mean? Well, it means anything scary looking, just so the gun doesn’t make you go out and kill people.”
And now we’re faced with “Surely you agree that it’s bad for kids to shoot themselves with daddy’s gun, right? Good, so we’ll pass this mandatory trigger lock law.”
The people in California, New York, Washington, D.C., etc were also faced with mandatory registration. California then proceeded to ban all “assault-weapons” [pronounced with a sneering, mocking tone followed by a snort] whether registered or not. People who just a year or two previous were forced to register their legally obtained rifles were forced to take them out of the state, turn them in for destruction, or face arrest and prosecution. D.C. has banned all guns not already owned and registered prior to 1976 and outlawed any defensive use of a firearm in the home or anywhere else except a place of business. And since D.C. has no state-level government and is governed by congress itself, we have there a glimpse of what is in store for us in the rest of the nation.
Well, we gun owners have done enough compromising*****, and we’re going to fight any additional regulation. Because the slope is being cut out from underneath us.
***** I just thought I’d point out the dictionary definition of the word compromise:
(bolding mine)
Got that? mutual concessions. That means we give something, you give something. So it’s technically correct that we haven’t compromised. We give up additional rights and liberties, and the prohibitionists give us…what…additional rules? Bullshit.
I tend to agree with you to some extent, but in law (and by the Slippery Slope :), politics) the slippery slope is real.
The law is full of “bright-line tests”. If the situation is X, then the result in the law is Y, period. The particular circumstances are irrelevant. An easy example is (in most states) you can’t get your driver’s license until you are sixteen, regardless of whether you possess the requisite physical and mental maturity before your birthdate. Bright-line tests apply to aspects of contracts (a fully negotiated, arms-length contract is binding (absent fraud), regardless of circumstances), etc.
In law, bright-line tests conserve resources. Instead of testing each kid under 16 to see if they can drive in order to find the c. 10% who can, everyone’s gotta wait, saving the state resources. A contract is considered valid, and need not be litigated every time to determine its validity.
Where law and politics intermingle is often constitutional law. Take search warrants. The bright line is that you must get a judge’s approval, based on probable cause. But there are now scads of exceptions - exigent circumstances, inventory searches of cars, the Terry stop-and-frisk, etc. Putting aside the civil liberties implications of these exceptions, once you are on the slippery slope, most every search becomes a potential object of litigation about its validity, thus wasting judicial resources. Further, each cop now essentially needs to be a lawyer, to determine on the spot whether X or Y exception applies to the situation he/she is facing.
Sua
Oddly my family in the USA, gun owners as they are, don’t feel this way based on my last conversations on this subject. Perhaps an adjective should go with gun owners?
I’ll put in one more defense of my notion that a Slippery Slope cannot be applied retroactively. Joe Cool’s post made me think of it again…
The key ingredient of a Slippery Slope, as I understand it, is the link between today’s policy change and inevitable calamity. In this case, the slope runs between 1930s gun laws and… today’s laws. No calamity. (Unless you want to argue that today’s condition is indeed a calamity, because it leaves us susceptible to future calamity – but this would be a classic Slippery Slope itself.)
Therefore, events from the past should not be described as a Slippery Slope, unless the present conditions are already the worst-case scenario. “I told you the human race would be exterminated if you put A.I. robots in charge of the miilitary. Now look at us,” et cetera. As a caveat, I’d call a chain of events a Slippery Slope if they led to catastrophe in the past, when only an utterly unforseeable event brought the chain to an end (Hitler’s rise to power undone by global war, for example).
It depends on how you define a “calamity”. Holocaust-level? Definitely not (thank Spam). But why is it not a calamity that law-abiding citizens are forbidden from excercising their rights, as outlined in the Constitution? Take a look at Joe’s three examples, for instance…
I’m glad to hear that - I wasn’t sure what you were claiming (it seemed that you were claiming the moon with respect to slippery slopes; glad it’s not so).
I have a problem with that last sentence. Let me interject something that I thought I’d posted yesterday (but apparently didn’t) - the question of the effect of different political systems on potential slippery slopes.
Canada, as you know, is a parliamentary democracy. The majority party in the legislature is also in control of the executive; there is much less to stop a majority party from ramming through its program - in a parliamentary system, as I understand it, that’s what’s supposed to happen - you give the majority party license to implement its program, and after a few years it’s shown to have either succeeded or failed, and the voters vote on the basis of that.
The USA, OTOH, has system based on separation of powers, on checks and balances. President and Congress perhaps of different parties, the two houses of Congress perhaps in different hands themselves, sixty votes in the Senate needed to cut off debate, thirteen state legislatures sufficient to block a proposed Constitutional amendment.
I think it’s jumping the gun to say that an issue with slippery-slope effects under one political system would necessarily have the same effects under a very dissimilar system. I’d argue that our system militates strongly against slippery slopes in general, barring a pretty overwhelming consensus on an issue.
While staying away from the particular issue, I’d like to say that I’m not sure what the significance of that is. Given almost any issue, you have people on both sides who want far more than they’ve got. I’d like to see Bill Gates pay about a 75% Federal income tax rate; Lib would like him to be required to pay 0% - instead paying whatever he feels he needs to, to an independent governmental entity that he contracts with for such services. What of it? Which way does this mean tax rates are going? In which direction lies the slippery slope?
Ideally, I’d like to keep this from turning into another gun-control thread. We’ve already got a couple of those. I might be kinda behind the curve there, though.
How does the advance of technology figure into your argument, erislover? How do we add in, for instance, the fact that ‘arms’ in 1787 meant muzzle-loading, smooth-bore muskets? (Did they even have handguns in the Revolution? I know they didn’t have rifled gun barrels for another several decades; that was a major advance in its time.) Does the advance of technology, absent compensatory regulation, create its own slippery slope - to a point where we could all have our personal nuclear weapons?
I’m gonna start from erislover’s quote (see previous post) again, for another situation where I believe we’re on something of a slippery slope: habitat preservation (or, rather, destruction).
When it comes to preserving lands for wildlife habitat and ecosystem preservation, I’d say erislover is absolutely right - in this “political compromise based on ethical considerations, compromise is actually the wrong word to use. One side clearly wins, and the other side clearly loses.”
Each ‘compromise’ involves taking a previously undeveloped swath of land, setting aside a portion for the wildlife that used to run freely over the entire swath, and developing the rest. Every ‘compromise’ is a loss of ground, quite literally. There is no way to say that there is more natural habitat in 2000 than in 1990, in 1990 than in 1980, and so forth, except for the relative handful of animals that can adapt to life at close quarters with humankind.
I’m not sure you can say the slope is slippery, but the slope is definitely steep; without pushing particularly hard, the forces of development rack up win after win, year after year. The environmentalists’ ‘victories’, with rare exceptions, are where they manage to merely hold the line - such as in the Arctic Refuge.
But it’s backwards from erislover’s take on what he calls the ‘ethical considerations’: on gun control, I’m sure he’s implying, it’s the guys pushing downhill who are raising the ethical argument. With the environment, it’s the other way around. So I’m not sure there’s a pattern here.
You don’t accept the possibility that the slope may have begun in the 1930s, and is continuing today? We are currently somewhere near the bottom of the slope where it begins to accelerate downward, and we are getting nearer the bottom with the passage of each new set of laws and limitations. The positive reinforcement is the process wherein a new restriction is passed, anti-gun people see that the American people are willing to bargain away ever more of their liberty, and quickly a new set of further restrictions is drafted. The new set is passed, they see that the American people are willing…
(lather, rinse, repeat. Ok, lather, rinse, repeat. Ok, lather…)
According to your definition, a slippery slope can never be claimed legitimately because past events can never be applied? So it sounds to me like you’re saying that if, through observation of past events, the situation can be demonstrated as being a slippery slope, then by definition, it’s not, simply because today is not an endpoint (either the beginning or the final calamity). Is that right?
That’s one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard. Unless, of course, I’m misunderstanding your point, in which case, please do expound…
Before I reply to RTF I’d like to address some of the “s.s. arguments are invalid” people.
It helps to realize what a slippery slope represents: a trend in action. This trend does not need to be conscious. “They are acting to take all my guns away someday!” doesn’t necessarily stand up to a literal interpretation, but it does make the right point: if things continue as they are, I will eventually be without the ability to arm myself.
Whether in politics, legislation, world opinion, economic studies, or your own household’s interaction, trends can be found. Is the Fed succumbing to an illogical argument because they see an economic slippery slope coming, so they become proactive and adjust interest rates? Is the UN not thinking clearly because they see the possiblity of an explosive situation in a certain geographic location, and send in diplomats and such to help diffuse it?
Come on-- the slippery slope is the very stuff prediction is made of. Because I feel most trends are largely unconscious (not consciously acted out, just a cumulative effect) it takes active measures to counteract it. Sometimes I agree, the slope is really a valley.
But the Fed rarely takes that bet. Peacekeeping forces don’t take that bet. People who feel their rights are being violated-- and don’t see a sign of such things having an end-- won’t take that bet. Why not? Because once it becomes “obvious” that there is a catastrophic result it is already to late. Once all the guns are gone and we realize we’ve made a mistake, how do you propose we get them back? Ask real nice? “Vote it” to ourselves?
Now…
I don’t think it matters which side raises the ethical concern. In either case, one side is pushing against the other and there is rarely “ethical compromise.” I’m not even sure there can be solid ethical compromise at all. You can’t “sorta” stop killing people, you know? You can’t allow free speech “So long as it agrees with Party Politics.” Once it has become an ethical debate, any loss of footing is probably a complete loss. Or so it seems to me; I can’t see the reality of ethical compromise.
I think American Indian reservations are another fine example of the slippery slope, FWIW.
Here’s another: social security cards. Though most of us aren’t old enough to have experienced their invention first hand, ask some older family members. “Don’t worry, they won’t be used as identification. We’re not serializing our citizens.” People raised their concerns then… and now people with next-to-no resources can find your social security number and use it as identification to obtain all sorts of other identifications… credit cards, driver’s liscences, etc.
So is it valid? Not always. Should we take the chance? Mostly never.
Slippery slopes also sometimes have a rebound (metaphor shake, anyone?).
The decline and resurgence of tribal sovereignty in Canada, New Zealand, and the United States was a result of consistent (and, in the case of each country, often illegal) erosion of tribal authority, followed by the realization that the concept was so deeply buried in the legal system of each country that they could not terminate the relationship without compromising the very premises upon which each nation was built. As a result, tribes actually have more power today than they did fifty years ago.
Ironically, one of the key elements that saved tribes and their limited independence is that at the same time that they were headed for the history books, the national governments started to get complacent about it and changed their philosophy toward tribes. They freely violated their own laws on the assumption that the overall trend was toward termination, and hastening the process was therefore justifiable. They proved, for the moment at least, to be wrong.
Followers of the 2nd Amendment battle, and the erosion of civil liberties in general, might want to take note of that. It may get darkest just before the dawn.
Then again, American Indian tribes are still in serious trouble–and the United States is still deeply in violation of its own law.
So, you’re saying that it’ll get to the point that all guns are banned, but then all the gun laws will be repealed and it’ll be one big trigger-happy orgy?
Damn, that almost makes gun control seem worth it… 
“Slippery slope” is the name of a type of logical fallacy. I would think that by definition, it could never be valid.
This page (www.datanation.com/fallacies/distract/ss.htm) is where I looked it up. From reading it over, I gather that the crux of the slippery slope argument, and the reason that it is fallacious, is the inevitability of that final unacceptable outcome (in the OP’s example case, “the government outlaws/confiscates privately-owned firearms”).
In the sequence of events in Sam Stone’s post, to which Uncle Beer was referring in the OP’s example, each successive limitation on gun ownership certainly appears, in hindsight, to have paved the way for the following limitation. It’s not a slippery slope, though, strictly speaking, since that outcome wasn’t provably inevitable.
I realize that Uncle Beer may not have been using the term in its rigorous, formal sense. RTF’s OP, on the other hand, seems like it is. I’d argue that “slippery slope” was an imprecise choice of phrase on Unc’s part, since it’s a definite term which carries with it the supposition of fallacy. “Snowball effect” (one tiny piece of legislation is built upon by the next, which is built upon by the next, gathering momentum as it progresses) or “ratchet effect” (limitation on gun ownership progresses in only one direction, and each step toward further limitation is irrecoverable) seem to me to better describe the process the gun-rights folk envision (let me know if I’m off base here).
Let’s see if we can come up with a rigourous definition of what we’re talking about.
For there to be a good argument that we’re on a slippery slope, I’d say the following has to be true:
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The progress has to be essentially all in one direction; any progress for the side defending the purported ‘downhill’ goalpost has to be pretty trivial.
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The occurrence of each step has to make the next step significantly more likely than the previous one: after step n, step n+1 must be more likely to occur than step n was after step n-1 had occurred.
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There has to be a clear sense of when the game’s over, from the perspective of the defending side. (E.g. ‘when they come for our guns’, as another thread describes it. Or when slavery is abolished, or when the remaining undeveloped lands are too small to serve as functioning ecosystems, in two of my examples.)
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There can’t be any ‘good ground’ to defend well before reaching the end - no point at which the combination of public opinion, the political institutions, the strength and organization (and possibly desperation) of those on the defensive side of the issue, and the sense on the part of the side with the advantage that they’ve accomplished what they set out to do, tips the odds back toward even.
Any comments on these?
Maybe he should talk to mathematicians who use induction, or Alan Greenspan. I’m sure they’d be interested in hearing about it. I think inevitability is an unnecessary contruct in the argument, the outcome shouldn’t have to be necessary only likely.
RTF, I don’t agree with your number 4. That would make all slippery slope arguments fall under the SEP category (Somebody Else’s Problem) with the following remark, “Oh, come on-- you think people would ever really allow that?”
I also disagree with two, but just on a small point. For all n, S(n) <= S(n+1). Just wanted to tack on the “constant slope” problem.
Otherwise I think that is a much more realistic view of a slippery slope argument, yep yep.