slippery slope

I took a class on jurisprudence once – essentially on the philosophy of law. In it, we talked about logical fallacies (and I learned that an ad hominem attack as we understand it is actually ad personem attack. I won’t get into it because it’s boring).

One of the fallacies we talked about was something that always bugged me: the slippery slope. This argument is, as one might expect from something called a logical fallacy, bullshit. If anyone ever says anything is a slippery slope, they are full of it.

This was especially true in the context of legal discussions, because all the law does is draw lines in places. If you buy into slippery slope arguments, then you’d have to agree that setting the speed limit at 25 in the school zone is a slippery slope and, before you know it, people will be driving 500 mph through crosswalks full of kids.

It’s stupid.

But is it any more stupid or arbitrary than saying that allowing same sex marriage is a slippery slope to people marrying goats or everyone marrying their own kids? Because those are actual things people said to argue against same sex marriage.

And by the same logic, isn’t allowing ANY marriage a slippery slope toward child brides and turtle grooms?

That’s why it’s a logical fallacy.

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I started writing this with the idea of discussing AI in creative writing. I almost said it was a slippery slope, but then I got angry about the concept itself and here we are.

But writers using AI is tricky and a thing to be handled with care. I haven’t and I won’t let it near any creative writing, but I will admit that I used AI to draft some query letters. I don’t know if that’s going to completely backfire, but I will say that it pasted some artifacts into one letter, and the agent who got it has now passed.

Was it because of the AI evidence?

I’ll never know.

But she passed on my clearly-AI-ed query letter the same day I first saw the news about Hachette pulling that horror novel for using AI.

Draw your own conclusions.