[governance] Senate OKs Immunity for Telecoms

[Dan Krimm]

At 8:38 PM -0800 2/17/08, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

>I will not post further about this here, as it is off topic for this
>mailing list.

Fair enough, I will not bother to respond to your further enumeration of
posts in detail as I don't have the time either.  If today hadn't been a
holiday in the US even this response would have had to wait until at least
next weekend.  I'm afraid I won't have much time to allocate to this
offlist either.

Just this:

>>In *my* personal hierarchy of values, free speech trumps rejecting spam.
>>And that means that I agree in principle with the motivation of Gilmore's
>
>I do hate slippery slope arguments.  They are always the first to be
>trotted out in such cases, and rebuttal takes quite some time though they
>are patently absurd [yes that is a logical fallacy of some sort but its
>late, i am just off a plane in sanfran after 16 hours in the air, so ..]


Well, no, your position (that slippery slope arguments are "patently
absurd") is not a logical argument.  It is a value statement (with which I
certainly disagree), and your value judgment is often associated with
certain political ideologies.

It is akin to arguments that admit only "immediate causality" in
understanding and explaining complex systems such as human sociopolitical
communities.

Rejection of slippery slopes and dismissal of complex causality are
precisely the kinds of arguments made, for example, by those who continue
to reject the human impact on global warming as "still unproven".

Like the proverbial frog in a pot of water undergoing gradual ongoing
heating, if you wait until you have "incontrovertible proof" that you are
boiling to death, it is often too late to do anything effective about it
except complain that "well, we didn't *know*..." and prepare to die.  It is
not a formula for effective public policy.  Slippery slopes are rampant in
politics, and in fact they are often effective tools for getting unpopular
policy established "under the radar" -- they are part of what corrupts the
political process by avoiding accountability in representative governance.

Like a cloud which has an inside and an outside but no clear boundary
between the two (only a gradient), if you accept only clear boundaries you
will be subject to gradients of all kinds, unawares.  This can be used to
manipulate people into ignoring political gradients that are set up in a
highly intentional manner to justify the stepwise path into an inadvisable
and avoidable political future.

In political contexts, your position is a highly conservative stance (in
both the political and generic senses).  It is one area where political
conservatives and progressives have a fundamental contrast of values, and
one reason I call myself a progressive.  You can feel free to hate slippery
slope arguments, but if you attempt to marshal logical arguments to bolster
your position you will be following your heart with your mind, not the
other way around (which is usually what people claim, and even believe).

The French have a wise saying which I've heard translated as "The Heart has
its reasons, of which the Reason knows nothing."  Make no mistake which
"seat of reason" has the systematic advantage here, especially in political
contexts.

Dan

PS -- I should point out that while conservative rhetoric rejects slippery
slope arguments, conservative political forces often still use slippery
slopes as a tool to get the political results they want, nevertheless.
This systematic dissociation between rhetoric and action is part of what
leads progressives to distrust conservatives, as it looks elitist and
paternalistic and aimed to undermine the participatory dynamic of citizen
voice (by creating a fictitious "public myth" to sway the masses to support
narrowly-beneficial political ends).


-- 
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not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.
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