As I said 3 months ago, I will say it again. The Slippery Slope is a logical fallacy, but validity is not the same as truth.

The problem with the Slippery Slope (and the sudden upsurge of criticism of it from the Right) is that an implication is being intentionally changed to be an assertion, and typically the assertions are unprovable. In psychology, when this is done about thinking negatively, it's called "catastrophization".

It is important to understand why you stick to implications, and avoid assertions, which cause catastrophization.

We know why your car starts when you turn the key in the ignition. It is a mechanical series of implications, that lead to a logically valid result, and can be properly reduced.

If you turn the key, then the fuel pump starts and the pistons start moving. If the gas pump starts and there's fuel in the gas tank, then the fuel gets sucked into the gas line. If the gas line is filled with fuel and the piston is moving, then the the fuel will enter into the piston's chamber and it will be able to start a spark. If the spark ignites, it will cause the engine to run. HENCE, when you turn the key, the engine will run.

However, if any one of those things ends up being false in reality, then the implication must fail. Each and every one is individually causal to the other. If you don't have a starter, your car won't start. If you don't have gas, your car won't start. If your fuel pump isn't working, your car won't start. etc, etc.

If we were to truly catalog the entire logical map of why your car can actually start when you turn the key, you would see a vast series of assumptions that have to be made for the chain of implications to work. You have to have an alternator a starter. Every tube has to be connected. You have to have the right fuel. There has to be the right amount of oxygen. Your spark plugs need to be inserted. You have to have the right key. So on and so forth. We don't worry about most of these assumptions, because they're normally true (when was the last time your car didn't have enough oxygen to start?). And if they key doesn't cause the car to run, we then have to check those assumptions because if those assumptions were all true, then the car would have started. Thus, since the conclusion is false, one of our premises must be false (you don't have enough gas).

We know that the process of starting your car is not a Slippery Slope, because each logical event is designed to happen as part of the mechanical process. The implication can be relied upon because it is a known causal series of events leading one from the other, relying on clear assumptions that we assume to be universally true. We have the benefit of having no need to see into the future to deduce that something will be true, because the mechanisms we are relying upon are established, the implications are both sound and clear.

The fallacy occurs when we assert that the results of something that are not established. We're not really implying logical arguments, we are asserting that implications will be true. Catastrophization:

If I go to the bank, I will be shot. If I go to the bank now, I will be disheveled. If I am disheveled in the bank, the security guard will view me as suspicious. If the security guard views me as suspicious, I will nervously put my hands in my pockets. If I nervously put my hands in my pockets, he will think I'm drawing a gun. If he thinks I'm drawing a gun, he will shoot me. Thus, if I go to the bank, I will be shot.

The reason this is fallacious is because the vast array of underlying assumptions that support this conclusion are utterly unknowable. It is possible that you could be shot for these reasons. But you assume that you have to go to the bank disheveled. You assume the guard will view you as suspicious. You assume the guard will even see you. You assume that the guard will think you are drawing a gun.

This is how catastrophization works in real life, and why really depressed people have manic ideas like this. They simply take on faith all the underlying assumptions that are not knowable, and construct worst-case scenarios using implications, based off of these unproven and unprovable assumptions.

What people on the Right are complaining about is that the Left are using the fallacy to dismiss arguments that reject those fundamental assumptions. "It's a slippery slope fallacy that rent control will create homelessness because I'm a filthy communist that doesn't understand economics". In the same way "I'm not familiar with internal combustion engines, so if I don't understand something, then all of your fundamental assumptions can't be true. You can't possibly know that you have the right gas in the car, you can't even see the tank."

My suspicion is that the Right has so many worthless fucking black-pillers that they simply assert that their black-pill catastrophization is true, therefore the slippery slope fallacy must also be a myth. The toxic mentality of the reactionary doomer right, poisons their ability to understand that implication and assertion are still fundamentally different things in reality, regardless of emotional disturbance or communist lies.

I know this is a long rant, but ever since I heard Academic Agent ranting about the damn thing, even going so far as to wonder if fallacies should even be included in his Fundamentals of Logic course, it's been absolutely driving me up a wall.

Logical Validity is pretty important to me because I come at it from the programming world where Boolean Logic is literally our existence, and violating it means everything you do is a failure without. Absolutely rigid and uncompromising logic is imperative for any program to function, and it annoys me when fundamental things are being simply rejected out of emotional bias.