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.
In: Culture
It’s not a fallacy, I think people are usually just disagreeing about how slippery a slope is.
Let’s take the metaphor literally. You’re on top of a mountain, and there’s a slippery slope off a cliff. Is it reasonable to step into it? No.
If it’s a bunch of solid steps down to the cliff, is it ok to go down a few and get yourself out of the wind? Yep.
The idea that actions have consequences isn’t controversial and is not a fallacy. The question is what are the consequences, and are undesirable consequences easily reversed or prevented in other ways. I.e. how slippery, or inevitable, are the consequences. The fallacy that you’re talking about is probably just disagreement about slipperiness.
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