The slippery slope fallacy occurs when someone argues that a relatively small first step will inevitably lead to a chain of related events culminating in a significant (usually negative) outcome, without providing adequate justification for why each step in the chain must follow.
Example of Slippery Slope
- If we let our child out of his room, eventually he will want to leave the house, and will end up on the street. If he is walking around on the street then he will be snatched up by a stranger and sold into slavery in a remote region of the world.
Though it may be true that the child might leave the house and go on the street, ending up as a slave in a remote part of the world is comically unlikely. Each step in the chain is treated as inevitable when it is not. - If we allow students to use calculators in math class, they'll never learn basic arithmetic. Then they won't be able to handle any math at all, and eventually our entire society will become mathematically illiterate.
While over-reliance on calculators could have some effect on learning, the leap to total societal mathematical illiteracy ignores many intervening factors and is a dramatic exaggeration.
