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Comment by jlgreco | Hacker News Reader

There is always going to be a cost comparison that can be used to belittle something. The classic is "less than x days of coffee." Next step up is apparently "less than x days of lunch." What is the next one, "less than your car insurance" perhaps? $50,000? That is less than some cars cost! $100,000,000? That is somewhere around ten shuttle launches! A several billion dollar shuttle program? Please, just check out these national debt numbers?

These types of price comparisons between unrelated things are almost always worthless. You could make me feel ripped off over two dollars; I sure as hell can feel ripped off over $35.

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This is your friendly reminder that slippery slope is a logical fallacy.

But "compare to completely unrelated thing" is also a logical fallacy.

This is your friendly reminder that jlgreco's is not a deductive argument and that most of the logic we base our everyday decisions on would be called logical fallacies. It's time for a Fallacy Fallacy, I think.

This is also your friendly reminder that jlgreco wasn't even employing "slippery slope" logic. He wasn't arguing that employing a cost comparison will lead inevitably to employing further cost comparisons. He simply pointed out that one cherry-picks the level that best makes one's argument.

This is your friendly reminder that your post makes no sense.

This is my friendly reminder to finish my coffee before commenting on the internet.

I am not making a slippery slope argument. Comparisons between the shuttle program and the national debt are real, not some absurd hypothetical I've dreamed up that I think exists down some sort of slope with poor traction.

The point I am making is that price comparisons between unlike things are worthless.

If you prefer, here is an entire HN discussion on the problem of price comparisons between unlike things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4393817

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