A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “slippery slope”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander defends trigger warnings as tools for informed choice, not censorship, and criticizes arguments against them, especially those based on non-consensual exposure therapy.
Scott Alexander debunks misleading statistics about euthanasia in the Netherlands, showing claims of widespread non-consensual euthanasia are false and not supported by careful analysis of the data.
Scott analyzes four mechanisms that make slippery slopes real, using examples like Murder-Gandhi and playing Civilization, and proposes 'Schelling fences' as the solution - clear stopping points that people can credibly commit to defending.
Scott uses a thought experiment about aliens making British people sensitive to salmon photos to argue that causing offense should be viewed through a consequentialist harm-minimization framework rather than a deontological blame-assignment framework.
Scott argues that people make better decisions when evaluating issues in isolation rather than viewing them as symbols of larger political narratives, using examples from the Duke lacrosse case, environmental regulation debates, and gender politics to illustrate how overarching narratives distort judgment of individual cases.