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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

Big deal as it may be, the parent comment was placing the discussion in a plane you totally missed in your response.

The type of blackballing practiced by this campaign is similar to the kind of blackballing that ousted Brendan Eich. It is also a slippery slope.

Slippery slopes are dangerous. At each step of the way, you can reason about your present decision and easily justify it. Add all the steps and the picture is suddenly not so pretty. That is where the parent comment author aimed its reasoning.

You can only reason about slippery slopes by taking the long view; seeing where the slope leads to. Your comment takes the short view.

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We define the values we hold as a society through our actions and choices and that is the way it should be. I didn't necessarily agree with the Eich ousting but it shows a shift in values that I agree with.

The perpetrators of the Iraq war and the Patriot act have been able to avoid repercussions for their actions. I find this very distasteful because of my strong feelings about what these actions have done to my country. I believe it should've been obvious that the Iraq war and the Patriot act went very much against the core values of my country. I like to think I am taking the long view in that I'm hoping this reaction might influence similar decisions in the future and shape the values of this country in a way that is more consistent with where they were before the Bush administration. This can only happen if elected representatives believe there will be repercussions to making very disastrous, anti-American decisions.

Luckily we elected the polar opposite to Bush, who turned out to do things pretty much the same as Bush. Nothing that you are saying started or ended with Bush. We did similar things for a hundred years before Bush, and we are doing worse things now with Obama. The hatred of Bush and his administration is just bizarre. The Patriot act was voted for by Congress and continually extended by both R's and D's.

> Luckily we elected the polar opposite to Bush, who turned out to do things pretty much the same as Bush.

This has contributed to my belief that our current political system has failed we the people, even though it is operating exactly as intended. I was fooled by Obama's first campaign but quickly realized he's no different. I don't know what the answer is but inaction is too boring. I'm trying to reduce the amount of money I send to Wall St believing that they are behind many of the gov's ills. I'm also trying to reduce general consumption as much as possible believing that the taxes we send and lobbying by corporations pumped into the federal government are also at fault. My goal is to see a drastically reduced Wall St and federal gov without blaming R or D.

Coincidence or not, this is my first comment ever with a negative voting score. I guess downvoting is blackballing on a small scale: silence all those who have dissenting views.

I always upvote well written comments, regardless of my personal agreement with the view. I loathe this face of Hacker News I'm seeing today.

I'll upvote each and every 0 or -1 comment that is well written (as in: not a one liner, not a joke, presenting an opinion). It's my small effort towards the Hacker News I like, where quality of writing is valued instead of herd mentality.

fwiw, i upvoted your comment as I thought it was a well written response that didn't include flaming or anything of the sort. The fact that it is negative shows a sad reality.

Slippery slope is also a logical fallacy, so there's that.

it's a logical device. it is not always a logical fallacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Thank you for educating me, I didn't know that. However, I feel that in this case, my point still stands.

My comment only stated that responding to a long term analysis of this issue with a short term analysis is wrong because, if this is a slippery slope, it can only be detected with a long term view.

I can't see your point. Which is natural, as you haven't explained it.

My point is that your use of slippery slope was a logical fallacy. You haven't provided the analysis itself. Would you like to do that?

Was it? How? I can't read into your head. I don't know how you got to that conclusion.

Is qualifying the present situation as a slippery slope central to my argument? What if the present situation is not a slippery slope. Is my argument false? It isn't:

One comment takes a long term analysis and tries to determine if we are in a slippery slope. The reply ignores the long term view and looks at the particular situation.

Looking at the particular, short term situation is ineffective for determining if we are in a slippery slope. (this sentence is the crux of my argument)

Yeah, sorry, you don't get to just declare "fallacy!" and not explain yourself.

People aren't logical entities, so the fact that slippery-slope arguments are "logical" fallacies is completely irrelevant.

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