08 Oct Slippery Slope – FT#10
Show Notes
The Slippery Slope fallacy is committed when a person assumes if one bad thing happens, then more, and often worse, bad things will inevitably follow. It is often applied to changes in the law that some groups are campaigning for, and others find distasteful.
It is fallacious because to accept the Slippery Slope argument, you must ignore the possibility that the single change will happen and then everything will calm down unless there is a genuine reason to call for further change.
The examples used in this episode will be coming soon.
Here are the links to the stories we talked about
Anger is not a logical fallacy: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/27/politics/blasey-ford-kavanaugh-hearing-notable-moments/index.html
And finally, some things we really don’t have time to talk about:
- At a rally in West Virginia, Trump publicly declared his love for Kim Jong Un [clip] but, as everyone who’s watched a proposal on a jumbotron knows, that’s a dangerous move. What if Kim doesn’t feel the same way?
- Another thing Trump loves is claiming his rallies are record-breakingly yuge. The fact that Beto O’Rourke’s rally in Austin, Texas had an audience of over 55 thousand – far larger than any of Trump’s – would probably really annoy him, so we definitely shouldn’t keep mentioning it. Or tweeting it at him. And we shouldn’t mention the fact that it was actually the largest single candidate political rally since Obama in 2008 – ( someone rather conspicuous by their absence Donnie
- Having complained during the campaign about the world laughing behind America’s back, Donald addressed the UN General Assembly, where the world laughed right in his orange face instead [clip]. Trump later claimed that the speech was supposed to get a laugh, which means he must have been wondering why nobody laughed the last 15 times he said it at his rallies.
- The New York Times claimed this week that self-made billionaire Donald Trump actually received at least $413 million in today’s money from his father’s real estate empire, mostly through shady and probably illegal tax dodges during the 90s. That of course is the true meaning of American Family Values!
- Trump finally got rid of NAFTA, the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, and replaced it with a nearly identical trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. But this time, it’s called the USMCA. Because Obama’s version wasn’t called that, so Trump wins.
- Always committed to valuing business profits over human lives, the EPA plans to reduce regulations on radiation exposure. To justify this, they have turned to the work a couple of fringe scientists who say a little bit of radiation is good for you. The biggest mystery is, when did they decide to even pretend to justify things with science?
- As if to prove that last bit, the EPA is dissolving the position of Science Advisor. That’s the person whose job it is to explain the science that underlies their policies to the EPA administrator. Because why even bother? In a slightly more sinister turn, the Head of the Office of Children’s Health has been put on administrative leave without explanation. That’s the person who makes sure the EPA are not endangering the lives of children. Their next step must be to try to figure out how to change their name to SPECTRE
- And finally, an impact statement from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was written to justify Trump freezing car emission standards, says on our current course the planet could heat up by 7 degrees C by the end of the century. How does this justify doing nothing to reduce emissions you ask? By claiming it’s too late to do anything about it. But of course it’ll still be much cooler than the place Trump’s gonna be burning in by then!
