I have been hearing a lot of slippery slope (or as I so affectionately refer to them, "chicken little") arguments lately, and I have become very dismayed at their effectiveness in changing people's minds. I find these arguments to be not only entirely ineffective and unpersuasive, but, and perhaps more insidiously, completely logically fallacious. See, the fundamental problem with chicken little arguments is that the conclusion does not necessarily follow the premises. These arguments are pure conjecture and speculation, yet, when framed right, sound authoritative. The fact is that slippery slope arguments depend largely on a series of causal assumptions, none of which are ever justified within the argument. Just because something seems to make sense at first blush, does not mean that it makes logical sense.
Another issue I have with chicken little arguments is their utter determinism. The great minds riding on Einstein's coat-tails have essentially eliminated determinism as a viable philosophical model and the simple minds, such as myself, have always refused to ascribe to deterministic philosophies because we refuse to give up the notion of free will. Long gone are the days when a scientist could credibly assert that, if he could freeze time and determine the direction and velocity of every atom in the universe, he could see the future in its entirety. The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they depend on deterministic causal chains in order to come true. The slippery slope arguer will assert that if X occurs, then over time, Y will occur. That a whole myriad of other elements of causation and deviation could occur within any segment of the prescribed time span is irrelevant to the slippery slope.
My point here is that we encounter these arguments with increasing regularity in our daily lives. Politicians are some of the most egregious examples of slippery slope appeals to the emotions. So I charge my reader(s) - next time someone tells you that if, for example, we pull our troops out of Iraq then the whole middle east will erupt in violence, ask them why that is? Or if you hear someone say that if we allow the government to trump a liberty in favor of greater security that sooner or later we will be living in a police state, ask why. My caveat here is, please do not respond to the above examples, as I have meant only to exemplify two different slippery slope arguments I have heard a lot of lately (one from each end of the political spectrum, by the way), and in no way mean to undermine either of those arguments, but rather to encourage my reader(s) to question them.
