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
A slippery slope is not a logical fallacy if it is an argument in itself. You need to back it up with logic and evidence otherwise it’s a fallacy and not an argument.
The argument/valid use of slippery slope would be “this is a slippery slope because…”. The fallacy/invalid use would be “you can’t do that because it’s a slippery slope” without providing a valid reason why other than that it’s a “slippery slope”.
Slippery slopes are real and happen all the time, and are probably one of the biggest reasons people debate in the first place (such as debating about political ideologies leading to worse and worse things – which they often do).
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