Slippery when sloped

In My Humble Opinion
21

Here’s something bordering on a case study.

You may have read or heard about all the yelling and screaming about the words that real estate people should or shouldn’t use in their advertising, or that landlords should or shouldn’t use in seeking tenants. Idiocies like:
[ul]
[li] Don’t mention “ocean view” — Offensive to blind buyers/tenants.[/li][li] Don’t mention “walking distance to mall/church/school/beach/whatever” — Offensive to disabled paraplegics, atheists, people w/out children, etc.[/li][li] Don’t mention “family room” (offensive to non-families), “walk-in closet” (offensive to disabled), etc.[/li][li] Don’t say “quiet neighborhood” — Code-words for “families with children need not apply”[/li][li] Don’t say “his and hers closets” — Offensive to singles and gays[/li][/ul]
Et cetera, ad infinitum.

This began to be a big deal about 20 years ago. Real estate associations actually issued plastic pocket cards with lists of inadvisable words, color coded in red, orange, or black according to the likelihood of trouble.

I researched this phenomenon somewhat, circa 1992, for a class term paper that I planned to do (but never actually did). I actually went to the law library and read a bunch of court cases, and traced the development of the trend.

It really was a slippery slope going there. I don’t remember much of the details at all, but there was a clear pattern of lawsuits about questionable phrases, each citing precedent from other recent cases, and each extending the trends a little bit farther and a little bit crazier, a bit at a time.

The problem wasn’t about ads being offensive, per se. It had more to do with “steering” prospects towards or away from your advertised property, which was seen as discrimination. It started with common advertisements for swanky residential properties, which always showed rich white people as happy tenants and black service people (doormen, gardeners, porters) surrounding them.

It was later argued that phrases like “family room” was, in effect, “steering” families to respond to your ad, and steering single people away, in violation of anti-discrimination laws. Likewise with phrases like “near schools”. Then it went to “ocean views” was steering blind people away and expressing preference for sighted people. It just got crazier and crazier over a period of years.

So there really was a crazy-silly slippery slope going on there.

22

Well, I was going to start a thread on that oil spill at the ski resort, but now I daren’t.

23

I am suggesting a voluntary moratorium on the use of the “slippery slope” argument unless it can be shown that it has happened just that way in the past, or unless the person proposing it shows us the steps used to reach the conclusion that action A will inevitably lead to result Z.

24

Only if the tax rates were promised and legislated to never exceed that initial percentage

25

You can’t call it a slippery slope argument unless that result followed after someone predicted it. Who claimed that that result was inevitable? Who made that slippery slope claim?

26

I taught a class in Ethics - and it listed false arguments. One of them is the “Slippery Slope” definition.

I will grant you that people tend to grab onto phrases and over-use them to a point where you want to scream…but “slippery slope” is more than just the mis-used phrase of the day, it really is a “thing”. Many students were not aware of this trick in misleading others in debates.

27

Please elaborate?

28

Actually, I think this is an example of why the slippery slope argument is bunk. Tax rates used to be way higher than they are now, i.e. after WWII and in the late 70s/early 80s.

In order for the slippery slope argument to be valid, you would need to show an instance of someone proposing a small income tax, and then that tax going up and up and up and never coming down. Then you could say, “See, you start with a small tax and it’s a slippery slope to 90% taxation.” Except in reality, we hit 90% and then dropped down to 33% (for certain brackets), thus proving that the slope isn’t slippery at all! We can walk right back up it, in fact. 2/3 of the way up it for that matter.

It’s a logical fallacy for just this reason; it presupposes that there’s no tenable middle ground. That you can either have 0% taxation or 90% taxation, and nothing in between is sustainable.

29

If you want to throw off your opponent, you start with the subject at hand and take them down the slippery slope to get them off the crux of the subject. Then they are forced to debate/consider things that have no real relevance to the main subject.

For example:

Sure, we can legalize marijuana but then we have to look into legalizing cocaine and heroin and meth and other illegal substances, which will then lead to some severe addiction problems for many people that could be life threatening and difficult to determine long term health affects to people, perhaps causing birth defects to mothers who have used these drugs and we would have a society of brain damaged children. Do you want to have millions of children with brain damage filling our schools and requiring millions of special needs teachers that we cannot afford to pay? Are you saying the future of our children and grandchildren is irrelevant!!

(No matter how hard your opponent tries to get back to the subject of just legalizing marijuana, you simply come back and harp on the future of our poor brain damaged children they don’t care about. If you keep harping on it, eventually many in the crowd will identify this result with the original premise.)

Perhaps a wild example, but you get the idea. It can be done far more subtly - and usually is.

30

Or, If you legalize gay marriage, what’s next, legalized polygamy? Bestiality? Where does it stop!?!?

31

Gotcha. It’s the argument not the term you’re against. I thought perhaps you were proposing something like the “no calling another poster a troll” rule.