Dominos of Doom
Also: Slippery Slope, Snowballing, Where Do We Draw the Line,
Thin Edge of the Wedge, Camel’s Nose, Catastrophizing
Class: Distort > Exaggerate
Thin Edge of the Wedge, Camel’s Nose, Catastrophizing
Class: Distort > Exaggerate
Saying a small event will lead to huge
change with terrible consequences.
change with terrible consequences.
If you don’t do your homework you won’t get good grades and you won’t get into a good college so you won’t get a good job and your life will be ruined!
Whoa, sounds like dominos of doom!
If they increase class sizes to 30, next they’ll raise them to 40, then 50, then 60!
Not necessarily.
It’s 1920 and you want to give women the right to vote?! What’s next, letting goats vote?!
Are you saying you can’t tell the difference between a woman and a goat?
They say this bill is just to ban toy guns, but then they’ll ban open-carry, then ban guns altogether! Vote No to stop them now!
If the government can force kids to go to school, next they’ll force kids to work in coal mines!
This differs from Straw Man because it’s only predicting what would happen, not actually accusing the opponent of a position.
Foolacy vs. Fallacy
This matches the Slippery Slope fallacy. Some philosophers subdivide it into more specific fallacies for a sequence of events (usually 3+) versus one thing that gets gradually bigger. But in the real world, people use the term broadly for all of the above.
While many people know the term “Slippery Slope”, they don’t know why it’s called that or they have different explanations. Many philosophers have offered alternative names like wedge, camel’s nose, snowball, dam burst, and domino. I chose “Dominos of Doom” because even kids understand toppling dominos, so it’s intuitive, and it keeps a fun alliteration (Slp-Slp, Dm-Dm). “Doom” is suitable because this is always used for extremely negative outcomes, never mild or positive.This foolacy is used to argue against change, so on political issues it’s used mostly by conservatives against progressives who are pushing for big changes.