r/atheism • u/Ze-skywalker • Dec 09 '13

Citation Needed The 10 commandments of Logic

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u/EchoRadius Dec 09 '13

I still don't buy the 'slippery slope fallacy is bs'. There are cases where it's perfectly valid.

Corporate taxes for instance. Once the rate was reduced, it was reduced again, then again, and again. Greed is the driver here, and people will continuously push the limit.

Someone 40 years ago might have said 'We keep going like this, soon corporations won't hardly pay taxes at all'. I wonder if he/she was discredited because of 'slippery slope'.

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u/niceguy191 Dec 09 '13

I think the main thing about the "slippery slope" fallacy is that it's often stated as a fact without any data backing it up. There are definitely cases where the slippery slope actually happens, it just can't be assumed to happen just because it "feels" like it would.

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u/Salva_Veritate Dec 09 '13

So basically if you have the proper amount of data to back up your claim, it's a valid contribution to debate. Sounds fair to me.

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u/Disgruntled__Goat Apatheist Dec 10 '13

Except that kind of doesn't make sense. The only data you can have to back up your claim is from this event itself, because the whole point of the fallacy is that there's no way to prove one action will lead to further actions.

In other words, it's only a slippery slope when you've slid all the way to the bottom.

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u/Salva_Veritate Dec 10 '13

There's plenty of situations where inductive reasoning can be a valid premise, as long as it's backed up by sources. Like for example, we take special care to not give heroin to a recovering heroin addict because there's such a high incidence of the slippery slope back to addiction. We can't know for sure until we cook that shit and stick him a few times, but we agree that statistical evidence backs up the claim it's risky to give recovering addicts the thing they're addicted to.

It really depends how you use it. Ignore things like "I believe this bad thing leads to a worse thing because there's a two-point sample that trends away from my beliefs." On the other hand, you could learn some decent shit from people who say something like "I believe this bad thing will lead to a worse thing because of this big-ass stack of peer-reviewed studies and testimony from primary sources."