Why is the slippery slope argument not considered a valid argument?

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This has always bothered me, because I can think of instance where bad behaviors can definetly lead to worst behaviors. The classic, if you smoke pot you’ll use harder drugs, is clearly not true in itself. Weed doesn’t cause you to want to do harder drugs, but since weed is illegal in a lot of places, it could expose you to hard drugs and you could become a user. I understand that this is not always the case, but I’d like to better understand why this is considered a fallacy when it could be true sometimes.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

“A” slippery slope argument could be invalid, or it could be valid. You can’t say “the” slippery slope argument because it’s not some unitized concept.

Folks who are against particular slippery slope arguments often can’t perceive or don’t want to admit follow-on affects that could occur. One could say that an extreme example is “[For Want of A Nail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail).”

I’d say that the Overton Window is the cousin to the slippery slope, and far fewer folks dispute the premise of the Overton Window, so there’s gotta be some cognitive dissonance going on at some point.

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