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Simply that the syllogism:
Does not, in general, hold. Fantasizing about "they are going to take away the wilderness" makes perhaps even less sense than fantasizing about project 2025; at least that is an actual report produced by an actual think tank rather than a motte comment about what the out group is going to do next.
This is just "the slippery slope fallacy exists".
The logic is perfectly sound if you are able to find legitimate argument that the "political opponents" have a desire or interest to do Y, or that X is materially conducive to Y.
In both examples, there is plentiful evidence for both propositions.
Requiring strict proofs for suspicion of political activity is a stupid and idiotic policy that can only lead you to be ineffectual at the actual game being played.
You sound like a conservative defending civil unions for homosexuals on the ground that there is no evidence they will lead to marriage. If you want to be as politically ineffectual as that, be my guest. But I prefer to deal with the world as it is.
There is in fact zero evidence that anyone wants to enact the handmaidens tale or take the wilderness away from people. Speed limiters (which I think are dumb btw) are totally unrelated to that goal, in the same way that abortion restrictions are totally unrelated to making women into chattel.
Please don't be that bad faith here. There is extensive evidence that people want to curtail freedom of movement for various social planning reasons and extensive evidence that people want to restrict abortion rights for religious reasons.
Just because you decide to phrase it in hyperbole and made up hypotheticals doesn't refute that. It should tell your something that you have to distort the point that much.
H... Hyperbole? I'm literally quoting the guy in this thread for one point and the leftist protesters for the other point. If your point is that "abortion curtailment -> women are chattel" is a bad faith argument, take it up with your nearest college campus.
Also the "curtailing freedom of movement" evidence is (entirely? Almost entirely?) actually curtailment of freedom of driving through city centers. However, people moved around for a hundred thousand years before they could drive through a city center, so in some sense I am actually more partial to the "women as chattel" catastrophism.
I don't understand how you could possibly think this isn't an argument in favor of the slippery thesis.
Because it's totally normal to have different restrictions for activities in different places. I can drive at 65mph on the freeway, but I can't do that in my neighborhood. Is that an argument in favor of a slippery slope of speed limits being reduced to 25mph on freeways? I can park my car in some places but not others. I can punch people in a martial arts gym but I can't punch random people on the street.
Is the slope slippery in any of these cases? Probably not. More likely, there's a schelling point around which things coalesce, roughly speaking.
It was not that long ago, even more recently than the invention of the automobile, that pedestrians had much freer reign in city centers. Now, pedestrians are restricted to sidewalks and zebra crossings and much of the land in cities is given over to cars. It would be ridiculous for someone in the past to say there's a slippery slope towards pedestrians being banned from cities, despite the fact that their freedom was greatly curtailed and in the US we put up unbelievably ugly freeways in some of the most beautiful parts of our built environment. What ended up happening is that the pendulum swung one way, now it's swinging the other. Streets are getting pedestrianized, some freeways are being torn down or buried. So it goes. Looking at trends beyond the past five years makes it clear that the slippery slope happens to have a slippery incline at the end.
25 mph speed limits in your local area don't lead to 25 mph speed limits on the freeway because there's no mechanism by which the former makes the latter easier, so slippery slopes are only weak ones like "someone who wants to restrict one thing might have more desire to restrict another".
Having computer-controlled cars that phone home makes it easier to have cars that the government can turn off because the computer phoning home is a part of the mechanism that the government would use to turn the car off.
Then by this logic driver's license are a slippery slope to, I dunno, banning Republicans from driving? After all, there's already a mechanism by which the government would prevent Republicans from driving (by not issuing them a license).
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So you're just going to invoke the increasing normalization of the regulation of transport since the 1950s as an argument against that trend continuing into the future...because the trend is just normal? And then argue that the trend is great actually.
None of this makes any sense.
No, I'm invoking the fact that "I can do anything I want anywhere I want" is not a reasonable Schelling point and is not true for any other activity, even activities that you think are not endangered - so the fact that you can't drive in places you could drive before does not, in fact, mean that in the future you won't be able to drive at all, any more than the fact that i can't jaywalk across six lanes of traffic on Market street means that in the future I won't be able to walk around at all.
Where did I say that? I don't really care whether people in Oxbridge need a loicense to drive their cars across town, presumably they are getting the government they deserve. For my part I'm glad I can visit my local downtown area and hang out on the street without car noise and constantly avoiding pedestrians on a three foot wide sidewalk, so sue me. The marginal changes to curtail cars in downtown areas look like a good thing to me, and I see no appetite around me to ban driving in other places, and yes, I acknowledge it would be Bad if you couldn't drive into the wilderness.
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