"The left" and slippery slope arguments

[someguy]

the problem is simple. That which decides the actions of humanity as a whole is profit, money, production, however you want to say it. A people with the best ideals doesn't win the war, the people with the best weapons do. Greed rules and wins, and the predominant society of the world is perfectly designed to allow for this. Thus we have many problems, nobody is being intelligent and observing whether or not mankind should undertake certain endeavors, that which makes money is done. Curing cancer would be a bad thing, it would mean more humans, too many humans is a bad thing, too much of anything is bad, too much water is bad, too much oxygen is bad, too many people means that too much of the materials on earth are being converted from one thing to another thus causing an imbalance in the world.

 

Some might say we would never create slaves.. but then I wonder what truly is a slave? Men that work 9-5 could invent anything during their shift make anything during their shift and own nothing of what they did, they are rented slaves essentially.. but then we would say that they are payed and free to do as they please.. even collect enough capital to be the renter rather than the rentee. Slaves however were given food and lodgings probably even nicer than what a lot of people live in today. So is there really a difference between a slave and a person that must work most of the hours they are awake in order to sustain a life no better than those classic slaves endured? out of country out of sight out of mind.

 

Is the bad part of the US invasion in Iraq the deaths? would it be better if the states could over throw a government without any casualties? perhaps just a mere threat? Not at all, and i think or at least would hope that most would agree with that especially those that live in the US. I believe an enlightened society would live without economic boundaries between countries. With only one world army no private ones (of course some may be produced illegally thus the requirement for the world army). And Greed should not dictate our actions, it should be by the thoughts of our smartest men who may best foresee the consequences of our actions, they would certainly fail at times, but they would be the best mankind has to offer what more could we do?

 

You would likely disagree with me completely but look where our greed has gotten us so far. I remember when pollution, global warming was a myth, people are alive today that were alive before we had even the technology of producing most of the pollutants we produce now, our population is ever increasing, our yearly production of pollutants is accelerating, even if we manage to reduce the acceleration rate to 0 we would continue to produce the same amount of pollution year after year. how many years do you think we would have at this rate? do you even think reducing the acceleration rate to 0 is feasible? Sure we can reduce how much we make per person, but we are still making more people, our technology has limits it seems like we will be making more people forever.

 

There is a set quantity of energy available on our planet, we enjoy converting its various forms for our own use, we discover that this unbalanced the world too greatly, and we believe that all we need to do is take our energy from elsewhere and everything will be fine, also, granted, trying to convert what we have too much of into things we have less of, not bad but still temporary because one day we will have too much of that too. you want to make cars that run on hydrogen and produce water as exhaust? good idea, it will rain everyday. We are in it deep. I don't think you can't fix it by voting for someone different or recycling everyday or buying an energy efficient vehicle. People will sell that idea to you because they will make money from you believing it. What if buying less stuff was the best thing you could do for the world? who would tell you? nobody that would lose profit from it... so pretty much nobody then i guess. There's no profit in discovering profit is bad, so in a profit run world that is not likely to be discovered or at least shared if ever it was. Right? Or who would let us know this if this were true? we need an overhaul of worldwide magnitude i think. But we are too greedy for that.

 

Animal farm is a funny book huh? it shows us how our greed is destructive, it demonstrates how a society attempted to run equally would never work because of the greed of mankind of those in power and the implicit solution is to make everybody greedy have us all fight for stuff call it fair and watch the world consume itself. Imagine if tomorrow we were able to maximize the economy fully i don't mean fully as our capacity of production would currently allow, i mean fully as our raw materials would allow, we would spend all of our raw materials in a day. hmmmm. maybe having a great economy is not the greatest thing, our economy perhaps simply shows us the rate at which we are depleting our resources? (barring recycled products of course). Perhaps truly a good economy would be one that consumes our resources at a rate at which they could regenerate properly? certainly better technology could help us regenerate our materials more quickly but perhaps we should have invented those before going crazy and using up all our raw materials and creating a perhaps insurmountable imbalance of our planet. But a society based on greed would never be so wise.

[Haezed]

Oh, no doubt. The "Gay marriage? What's next? Polygamist beastiality marriages?" arguments drive me nuts too. Bill O'Reilly is certainly one of the main perpetrators of this approach.

 

Actually, I think there is a point to be made here re polygamy. The point being that the state does have a right to define and thereby limit marriage even between consenting men and women.

 

I say this even though I probably would support gay marriage if I were voting in a legislature BUT the point being made is that there is an important societal interest in defining what is and is not marriage.

 

Bestiality misses the point because the animal presumably can't consent.

 

I suppose it all boils down to whether you really are standing on a slope and whether it really is slippery.

[armygas]

I think Hitler could have done a better job with the war on terrorism.

Man, I hope you didn't really mean that. If we were in that type of regime then we wouldn't be able to have the ability to discuss "the slippery slope".

[Haezed]

Man, I hope you didn't really mean that. If we were in that type of regime then we wouldn't be able to have the ability to discuss "the slippery slope".

 

I don't think that was her point at all but she can speak for herself.

[lucaspa]

While I generally support "the left", and to a certain extent the crazy left (a.k.a. the "far left"), I really, really, really hate slippery slope arguments.

 

In all fairness, reasonable rational political discourse has been killed by creationists and the Republican conservatives: Gingerich, Limbaugh, Shaun Hannity, etc. What the Republicans have shown over the last 20 years is that people don't respond to reason. Instead, the best way to get your message across and win votes is to lie and use fallacious arguments.

 

In order to survive, people opposing the conservative agenda have had to adopt the same tactics. I dislike it too, but to point only to "the left" and ignore the use of the same tactic by the right is not reasonable.

 

If you think slippery slope is fallacious, then you must (especially in a science forum) object to EVERY use of the argument.

 

But, quite frankly, if you look at totalitarian governments generally, using an external enemy has been a common, and successful tactic to remove personal liberty. Historically, there is considerable evidence that, indeed, the trend does continue, manipulated by people who want power, until you have a totalitarian state. Look at Stalin, the Caesars, Khomeni (the USA was the outside threat), Pinochet, Castro, etc.

 

Historically, the way to undermine a democracy has been the path that is being objected to. In the name of getting "security", you lose freedom. You can be perfectly safe or you can be free. You can't be both at the same time.

[Pangloss]

In all fairness, reasonable rational political discourse has been killed by creationists and the Republican conservatives: Gingerich, Limbaugh, Shaun Hannity, etc. What the Republicans have shown over the last 20 years is that people don't respond to reason. Instead, the best way to get your message across and win votes is to lie and use fallacious arguments.

 

In order to survive, people opposing the conservative agenda have had to adopt the same tactics. I dislike it too, but to point only to "the left" and ignore the use of the same tactic by the right is not reasonable.

 

Boy, some pretty heavy revisionist history going on there. Who do you think taught the conservative entertainment industry how to do its thing? But I'm sure it must seem that way to someone ideologically rooted in the left wing, just as it must have seemed to be the opposite to those rooted in right wing during the Clinton years.

 

To those of us who don't find it necessary to adhere to one side or the other, however, the political devolvement of the last twenty years looks very different.

[someguy]

What the Republicans have shown over the last 20 years is that people don't respond to reason. Instead, the best way to get your message across and win votes is to lie and use fallacious arguments

 

so then, if this is true and I must admit i completely agree with you, how good really is democracy? If the people can't figure out what is fallacious, what is a lie what is window dressing, and what makes sense and is good for a community both nationally and internationally, then why does it seem like a good idea to have the people decide who governs? I honestly only see two good arguments in favor of a democracy, the first is that it prevents a population from being led by an abusive leader, or government, that exploits them reasonably well (assuming elections don't get rigged and stuff like that). This is a good point. The second is that there is no other option that can achieve the same. this is untrue, and besides where there are wealthy there are exploited, government or not and to me exploitation is exploitation regardless of the source. there's a better way.