How can even a saint become a murderer? Exploring the Slippery Slope Fallacy

2,174 views Wait, is this logic right? • Feb 03, 2024

Slog Reference: Slippery Slope

Description

Understanding the slippery slope fallacy will help you identify it in real life and avoid its worst-case scenarios. But what is a slippery slope, and how does it affect you in real life? We’ve explained the concept of a slippery slope in this episode of the future podcast. Learn more about it in the next 15 minutes.

More videos for you:
Sunk cost fallacy: https://youtu.be/pgH79XsGlo4

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00:00 Introduction
00:15 The fiction
03:14 Slippery slope
03:30 Real-life example
05:00 Example 3
06:23 The concept
07:05 X + 1 Syndrome
09:16 How to avoid slippery slopes?
11:40 Misinterpretations
13:30 Overuse

#futureiq #slipperyslope

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Slippery Slope

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46.00

Transcript

- so today we are going to talk about the adventures of murder Gandhi a fictional character thank you to explain the concept of slippery slopes I got I got worried for a moment putting those two words together so I I'll first give two examples then we'll talk about the concept okay in our fictional word Gandhi is a pacifist absolutely against violence very close to the real and there is billionaire who comes over billionaire is a little crack of course tells Gandhi that I will donate a billion dollars for the upliftment of the downtrodden but in return you have to take this medicine which converts you into a murderer not taking it Gandhi is not going to take it of course not taking it

0m 46s okay but billionaire is smart he comes back he creates a new medicine which increases the chance of Gandhi thinking murderous thoughts to 1% from 0% okay and he says okay you take this this 1% medicine huh and in return I will use a billion dollars for the upliftment of the downtrod uh do you think he will take it it's a decent trade or 1% is yeah nothing right I mean you know just getting murderous thoughts just doesn't mean you're going to act or you're not going to do anything about it right Gandhi takes it right nothing changes as far as violence is concerned every once in a while he gets a violent thought but it's like you know he discard just a

1m 31s thought it discarded yeah now the billionaire comes back and says can you take this medicine again for another billion dollars for another billion dollars you go from 1% to 2% oh and Gandhi says you know what that 1% was not so bad it was easy to suppress 2% doesn't seem bad and I can see how many people are being helped by the billion dollars yes right okay we do this 10 times now Gandhi is having murderous thoughts quite 10% of the time and when the billionaire comes back what is going to happen I hope Gandhi rejects those billion dollars that's where you are probably wrong right the original Gandhi H the pacifist would definitely have rejected it yeah

2m 19s but it's not the original Gandhi who's been thinking murderous thoughts slowly increasing murderous thoughts for 10 years right I bet he has murderous thoughts about the billionaire now no not the billionaire but he has a list of people where he thinks you know what these are better of dead right it's not fictional case fictional case let me please underline fictional remember the important point is that the person who's taking the 11th pill is not the same person who took the first one who took the first one right and this just continues at any point right you know at 67 7% he thinks you know what 67 to 68 is not such a big deal and before you

3m 05s realize it Gandhi is running wild shooting people in Delhi there is an image I didn't want to have there is a visual I didn't want to think so you realize what is happening here what it was a slippery slope ah right now it makes sense he should have said no the first time okay but listen that's Gandhi this is a fictional scenario okay let me give a real scenario okay Rahul H name changed sensible guy different think don't think oh sorry no so a different guy sensible guy is going out on Friday night with a bunch of friends he knows that two glasses of alcohol is good it gives him a nice buzz and he doesn't do

3m 58s anything embarrassing more than two is a problem he knows that so he has decided there's a limit two is his limit right so he goes 1 hour later he's head two he's feeling nice and his friend say come on yeah take one more these sound like my friends remember it's the same concept the sensible Rahul from 7 p.m. would have refused the third drink but this is not the same guy right this is a guy whose two drinks down his inhibitions have been reduced by the aloh in the system very important point he thinks that Rahul is like that Rohan he thinks that Rohan is like too good for his own good right and he needs to

4m 42s loosen up a little bit and have some fun in life so now he's had the third drink and before you know it he's like six drinks down and doing really embarrassing [ __ ] right how many of you identified with this nobody nobody none of the people here drink right I'll give an example where you know Shri Kant name changed okay sits and decides that you know okay I'm going to play uh civilization just until 10:00 okay because tomorrow morning I have to get up early there's an important presentation at work so just until 10:00 I'm going to play Civilization then I will stop I don't like this example this is too close so he plays for 2 hours at

5m 26s he thinks you know what I can play 15 minutes more and fine tomorrow morning I'll sleep 15 minutes less seems like a fair tradeoff absolutely Fair tradeoff because done it why is this happening there is a different concept called U hyperbolic discounting right because 15 minutes in the future does not cost the same as 15 minutes now right you value the 15 minutes now far more than the 15 minutes tomorrow yeah we are all we are all trained to to get instant gratification for our not just that I mean even like money right 100 rupees next year and 100 rupees today very different I take 100 rupes today so that's what so Shri plays another 15 minutes and at 10:15 he says

6m 13s you know what another 15 minutes is not going to be right I mean before you know it it's like 4:00 a.m. and shrikant is asking himself what is wrong with me the idea of a slippery slope is that you are standing on a flat ground just before a slope and that slope is like has some slimy stuff on it which is very slippery at the bottom is probably a dragon which is going to eat you right you don't want to step on that slope because once you are on that slope you can't stop yeah no place to stop it is out of your control the only time you can control it is at the beginning do not enter the slope and

6m 51s this isn't just funny examples like this right lots of situations in life have this problem I want an example with naven now I've had enough examples of Rohan and Shri I want an example with the yeah so I will give an example of myself I uh went to the US after my undergraduate uh I was there I went in 92 okay around that time one of the biggest problems used to be that kids go there and they never come back to India right still the same mom is unhappy my grandfather is unhappy and my profs were unhappy I wanted by 94 I had decided I wanted to come back okay okay but lots of people told me about a concept called

7m 33s the X+1 syndrome Okay Okay the reason so many people who wanted to come back end up staying there is because they you know say okay fine let me finish my degree then I'll do a job for a couple of years earn some money then go back okay once you're doing a job for a couple of years of course you know everybody is telling you to get married and you say okay fine you know let me get married have some fun here for a couple of years then I'll go back couple of years after your marriage you tell yourself you know what let me have children here let them have an American passport then we'll go back you realize

8m 07s what is happening here what is this it's a slippery slope and uh there's a famous article somebody had written about it called the X+1 syndrome because there's always X you are saying I will go back after X but when you reach X it has become X+ one yeah my friend sandip Gupta thank you he told me if you really want to go back pick a number a very round figure right either a date saying that before this date I will go back or a bank balance saying when my bank balance hits this number I will go back and let that be A Line in the Sand lakman Rea I thought that was a good idea and I said before the end of the

8m 47s century I will go back for him the end of the century also turned out to be the end of the Millennium yes exactly and in fact that is what we did uh right I got married in 97 end of 199 uh my wife was doing an MBA hadn't finished so we cheated a little bit we said end of century is 2000 November 2000 we left and we were in India on January 2001 right took a long time why did that work why did that work because this 2000 is a nice round figure it is such a clear marker right 200000 is not the same as 2001 right you would know if you say let me go in 2001 you know that

9m 30s there's no difference between 2001 and 2002 2002 and 2003 right this concept of this round clear psychological 2000 number right it's called a shelling Point by the way we'll do an episode on it very important concept was very difficult to explain so I'm slowly building up to that that's shelling spelled s h shelling s c h e l l i n g based on Thomas shelling a very famous uh Economist whose ideas helped in in us and Russia not bombing each other with nuclear bombs okay all right that's a good selling point for me to read up more he was consultant on Doctor Strange Love okay so another good shelling selling point that is an example of how

10m 17s you avoid slippery slopes either you don't get on it at all or if you get on the cut off should be such a clear bright line that is difficult to ignore that you know you can't later on convince yourself oh this is the same as this next one all right so uh to take the example of my gaming habits what I should have said is if I sleep after midnight I'm not going to get enough sleep and my presentation is going to get ruined so I have to have to sleep at midnight Midnight becomes my maybe right because midnight is actually at least for me it's not as much of a bright line as possible so the other technique h is

10m 59s to put the control in somebody else's hand right like have a friend who will come and yank out the card at midnight you should all have friends like that yeah and if you L lots of psychological techniques like this where the decision is taken out of your hand right like you tell a friend you give them a lot of money and you sell them feel free to spend it upon yourself if I do X on this date right so otherwise you have to return it to me if I stick to my uh line yeah I a little wory about giving money to friends but uh the concept and the point still stands and they are pretty strong my the thing

11m 38s about slippery slopes that I'm worried about is that uh they can often be misinterpreted and they can be Mis applied if that's even a word because uh there was this very famous argument uh using the concept of a slippery slope where people would say and this is just an example I'm giving if you allow homosexuality to flourish in the society then it will soon lead to bestiality and pedophilia and even wor kind of so see one thing you have to realize is that slippery slope actually works only if the stages are different stages of the same thing right 9:00 10:00 11: there are all times right whereas different behaviors are just completely different from each other there is no sliding from

12m 23s homosexuality to bestality right they're not the same thing it's not like a person starts doing this and they'll automatically get interested in this right it's not a Continuum these are different category things so slippery slope argument doesn't apply there in fact lots of people love to apply slippery slope arguments in such places uh but they're wrong right you have to apply it only when there is an actual Continuum another situation where uh slippery slopes tend to usually trouble is when you are a parent and you are probably giving say uh Tech to your child because the the child refuses to sit and so again same two concepts right uh uh I mean especially with children

13m 06s there is no shelling Point okay that you're saying half an hour you get of the phone doesn't work like because half an hour becomes 35 minutes 35 becomes 40 so either zero there is no phone in the house at all or the control is somewhere else an app which just automatically cuts off access after 30 minutes and nobody can change that so now that we have learn this concept let me warn you right don't overuse this argument like how like I mean if you're saying that I shouldn't do this because it's a slippery slope and things will change right okay just avoiding doing anything because everything is a slippery slope is just a way for you to become an old

13m 49s trusty dinosaur who's out of touch with the modern world right crusty dinos do not use this in a limited number of place places right not everything is a slippery slope and there are a whole bunch of slippery slopes that you do want to fall down like old people saying that all marriages should be arranged marriages and allowing any slight deviation in that is a slippery slope you know it's a good slippery slope boss have you seen arranged marriages but listen we are going back to the concept of arranged marriages in a sense if you look at Tinder it is basically what used to happen over chai but on on your swipes left and right what what else I am right you know I am

14m 34s right you know I am right Tinder is a precursor to Modern arranged marriages prove me wrong don't actually actually do good fun I agree about the fact that not everything is a slippery slope and uh is there is there like a guideline to figure out what slippery slope and what not to actually that part is a little tricky but maybe we will cover it uh when we talk about Pace layers right to decide which things you should change fast and which things you should think of a slippery slopes H paced layers so by the time you watch this episode if that episode is already done and uh available you'll find it in the show notes if not we'll get to it we we'll

15m 16s definitely get to it there are a lot of things that me and N need to talk about and we will talk them talk about them but for now this is it Shri Kant naen thank you this is future IQ