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Eugine_Nier comments on Schelling fences on slippery slopes - Less Wrong
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Comments (189)
I never thought I would hear a plausible defence of slippery slope arguments.
An interesting analogy is with the Sorites or 'heap' paradox, and mathematical induction. In the paradox you show that one grain of sand is not a heap, and that two grains are not a heap, and three.... so you generalise that for if N grains of sand is not a heap then N+1 grains is also not a heap. Therefore 10^1000 grains of sand cannot be a heap, and there are no heaps!
Obviously the problem is that the premise isn't true for any arbitrary N, (unlike cases of mathematical induction where you prove them to work for an arbitrary number).
Similarly with slippery slope arguments, proving that you can move between two points does not mean you can equally easily move to any other point. For example it is plausible that if abortion term limits were changed from say 16 weeks to 17 they might be more likely to move t0 18 in the future. But That doesn't logically imply we will therefore kill born babies.
Edit: Not sure why this has been downvoted so much, did I misunderstand something about the post?
You may want to look at this.
Thanks, I've seen that before. What interested me about the reaction to it was every commentator decried them for suggesting babies should be killed, said that it would give weight to the arguments of anti-abortionists or that it showed how out of touch academics were with public opinion. But no-one gave an argument in response about why an 8 month abortion and a born baby are different in a morally relevant way. I had underestimated how much in general public discourse even discussing a morally condemned act was itself condemned.
In the context of slippery slopes, again this is moving between two adjacent points not showing you can just as easily move to any point on the scale.
Yes, and then we move to a point adjacent to the new point, and then to a point adjacent to the next point. This is how slippery slopes work.
He means adjacent without ascension/descension: lateral movement, i.e. change in non-morally relevant variables.