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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

The "slippery slope" argument is not a fallacy. If you were in 2001 and told people what the state of data collection and privacy would look like in 20 years, they'd call you an absolute conspiracy nutjob. It was a national news story then that a printer driver phoned home. Now look at where we are at, and every loss of privacy has had some seemingly reasonable excuse.

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It's absolutely a fallacy according to any course on logic because it is impossible to refute.

https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit...

For the narrow formal definition in your link, that being an assertion without evidence, then yes, it's a fallacy.

In the colloquial language we are using here, there is absolutely evidence, tons of it, that this will take the same downward trend of previous infractions.

Are you under the impression that people who teach logic are unaware of real world evidence that "things change and some of the those end up being bad"?

No, I am under the impression that in this thread we are using the term "slippery slope" to mean something else that the one you provided in the link.

Also your characterization of "things change and some of the those end up being bad" is not the nature nor specificity of the evidence in this case.

Lastly, perhaps you should remain consistent and not utilize the "appeal to authority" fallacy.

A slippery slope is a logical fallacy. There's not a colloquial version of that term that means something different. It's a style of argument, where you asset that one action will lead to another action without any evidence of a direct casual link between the two.

Second, I'm not appealing to authority. You said a slippery slope isn't a fallacy. I provided a link which makes the case as to why a slippery slope is considered a fallacy.

We are not using "slippery slope" in any way which is different from the examples given.

That one thing has lead to a bad thing in the past is not evidence that this thing will lead to this specific bad thing in the future.

Yes, sometimes, slippery slopes end up being slippery, and sloped.

But that doesn't mean anyone has to take it as a given that any other specific slope will be slippery, nor slippery in some specific way which leads to some specific outcome.

See my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28084044

Slippery slope has almost always meant a fallacy, because it typically invokes "the sky is falling" examples that have no evidence to support it coming to pass - even here.

While I see the point, "slippery slope is a fallacy" seems to have been abused far more than "slippery slope" on HN over the decade I've hung around here.

That's because nobody makes an argument by starting with "I'm making a slippery slope argument" - it's always identified by someone else. Same with whataboutism, no true scotsman, etc. by their nature.

No, it is because people invoke slippery slope fallacy for actual, real slippery slopes.

The slippery slope fallacy us real - but so are the slippery slopes.

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