Stephen West in his podcast spends sometime trying to explain different kinds of fallacies and how they work and give examples of how each kind of fallacy could be used in an actual conversation or argument. One of the most interesting fallacies which West discusses is the slippery slope fallacy. The slippery slope fallacy works on the premise that one event or one major change to the way that things are done can cause a series of events which will lead to a horrible outcome. This fallacy is commonly used by opponents of certain changes that they think will lead to major and irreversible changes in society. One good example of this is used by opponents of legalizing marijuana who claim that it is a “gateway drug” and that the simple act of legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana will lead to young people doing more and harder drugs, which will lead to crime and ultimately they claim to moral decay and
Response 1 to Conley
The appeal to ignorance is a particularly bad fallacy because it does have in it a strong claim that unless something can actually be proven it can’t possibly real unless you have proof it, There are lots of things which we can’t see or feel which are obviously real, things like gravity, subatomic particles, and other natural forces this mean that is ridiculous to argue that something isn’t possible just because we can’t prove its existence.
Response 2 to Delaney
That particular fallacy, the bandwagon effect or groupthink is particularly bad. People do have a tendency of accepting the wisdom of the group and doing something in concert just because it is something everyone thought was for the best. The problem with this fallacy is that it hides the voices of those who are either courageous enough to speak or smart enough to realize something bad is happening. This sort of behavior is bad because it leads to bad decisions being made which tend to make everyone worse off
