Editing Slippery slope (section)

==Metaphor and its alternatives==
The metaphor of the "slippery slope" dates back at least to [[Cicero]]'s essay ''[[Laelius de Amicitia]]'' (XII.41).  The title character [[Gaius Laelius Sapiens]] uses the metaphor to describe the decline of the Republic upon the impending election of [[Gaius Gracchus]]: "Affairs soon move on, for they glide readily down the path of ruin when once they have taken a start."<ref>{{cite book |last=Reid |first=James S. |author-link=James Smith Reid (author) |title=M. Tulli Ciceronis Laelius de amicitia |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=1893 |page=109 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=fw7WAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA109 |access-date=2020-06-16}}</ref>

===Thin end of a wedge===
Walton suggests Alfred Sidgwick should be credited as the first writer on informal logic to describe what would today be called a slippery slope argument.<ref name="Walton 2015" />{{rp|275}} Sidgwick wrote in 1910: <ref>{{cite book |last=Sidgwick |first=Alfred |title=The Application of Logic |location=London |publisher=[[Macmillan & Co.]] |date=1910 |page=40 |url= https://www.archive.org/stream/applicationoflog00sidgiala?ref=ol#page/40/mode/2up |access-date=2017-03-16}}</ref>
{{Blockquote|1=We must not do this or that, it is often said, because if we did we should be logically bound to do something else which is plainly absurd or wrong. If we once begin to take a certain course there is no knowing where we shall be able to stop within any show of consistency; there would be no reason for stopping anywhere in particular, and we should be led on, step by step into action or opinions that we all agree to call undesirable or untrue.}}

Sidgwick says this is "popularly known as the objection to a thin end of a wedge" but might be classified now as a decisional slippery slope. However, the wedge metaphor also captures the idea that unpleasant end result is a wider application of a principle associated with the initial decision which is often a feature of decisional slippery slopes due to their incremental nature but may be absent from causal slippery slopes.

===Domino fallacy===
{{Main|Domino effect}}
[[T. Edward Damer]], in his book ''[[Attacking Faulty Reasoning]]'', describes what others might call a causal slippery slope but says:<ref name="Damer 1995">{{cite book |last=Damer |first=T. Edward |title=Attacking faulty reasoning: A practical guide to fallacy-free arguments |publisher=[[Wadsworth Publishing]] |location=Belmont, California |date=1995 |isbn=978-0-534-21750-1}}</ref>{{rp|135}}

{{blockquote|1=While this image may be insightful for understanding the character of the fallacy, it represents a misunderstanding of the nature of the causal relations between events. Every causal claim requires a separate argument. Hence, any "slipping" to be found is only in the clumsy thinking of the arguer, who has failed to provide sufficient evidence that one causally explained event can serve as an explanation for another event or for a series of events.}}

Instead Damer prefers to call it the ''domino fallacy''. [[Howard Kahane]] suggests that the domino variation of the fallacy has gone out of fashion because it was tied to the [[domino theory]] for the [[United States]] becoming involved in the war in Vietnam and although the U.S. lost that war, "it is primarily communist dominoes that have fallen".<ref name="Damer 1995" />{{rp|84}}

===Dam burst===
Frank Saliger notes that "in the German-speaking world the dramatic image of ''the dam burst'' seems to predominate, in English speaking circles talk is more of the slippery slope argument",<ref name="Saliger 2007">{{cite journal |title=The dam burst and slippery slope argument in medical law and medical ethics |journal=Zeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik |date=2007 |last=Saliger |first=Frank |volume=9 |pages=341–352 |issn=1863-6470 |url= http://www.zis-online.com/dat/artikel/2007_9_159.pdf}}</ref>{{rp|341}} and that "in German writing dam burst and slippery slope arguments are treated as broadly synonymous. In particular the structural analyses of slippery slope arguments derived from English writing are largely transferred directly to the dam burst argument."<ref name="Saliger 2007" />{{rp|343}} 

In exploring the differences between the two metaphors, he comments that in the dam burst the initial action is clearly in the foreground and there is a rapid movement towards the resulting events whereas in the slippery slope metaphor the downward slide has at least equal prominence to the initial action and it "conveys the impression of a slower 'step-by-step' process where the decision maker as participant slides inexorably downwards under the weight of its own successive (erroneous) decisions".<ref name="Saliger 2007" />{{rp|344}} Despite these differences Saliger continues to treat the two metaphors as being synonymous. Walton argues that although the two are comparable "the metaphor of the dam bursting carries with it no essential element of a sequence of steps from an initial action through a gray zone with its accompanying loss of control eventuated in the ultimate outcome of the ruinous disaster. For these reasons, it seems best to propose drawing a distinction between dam burst arguments and slippery slope arguments."<ref name="Walton 2016" />

===Other metaphors===
Eric Lode notes that:<ref name="Lode 1999">{{cite journal |last=Lode |first=Eric |title=Slippery slope arguments and legal reasoning |journal=California Law Review |date=1999 |volume=87 |issue=6/3 |pages=1469–1543 |doi=10.2307/3481050 |jstor=3481050 |url= https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1116798/files/fulltext.pdf}}</ref>{{rp|1470}}

{{blockquote|"Commentators have used numerous different metaphors to refer to arguments that have this rough form. For example, people have called such arguments "wedge" or "thin edge of the wedge", "[[camel's nose]]" or "camel's nose in the tent", "parade of horrors" or "[[parade of horribles]]", "domino", "[[boiling frog]]" and "[[Snowball effect|this could snowball]]" arguments. All of these metaphors suggest that allowing one practice or policy could lead us to allow a series of other practices or policies."}}

[[Bruce Waller]] says it is lawyers who often call it the "parade of horribles" argument while politicians seem to favor "the camel's nose is in the tent".<ref>{{cite book |last=Waller |first=Bruce |title=Critical thinking: consider the verdict |publisher=Prentice Hall |location=Upper Saddle River, N.J |date=1998 |isbn=978-0-13-744368-0}}</ref>{{rp|252}}

The 1985 best-selling children's book ''[[If You Give a Mouse a Cookie]]'' by [[Laura Joffe Numeroff]] and [[Felicia Bond]] popularized the general idea of the slippery slope for recent generations.