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Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by joshschreuder on Friday April 12, 2019 @09:34PM (#19650507)
You've literally described a slippery slope fallacy
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by colordrops on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:09PM (#19650636)
It's not a fallacy. When a printer driver reporting stats back to the manufacturer made national news in the early 2000s and prompted calls for laws regulating privacy, the argument was that it was a slippery slope fallacy to assert that privacy violations would get worse. Look at where we are now.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by enraged_camel on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:21PM (#19650690)
>>It's not a fallacy.

By itself no, but it is often used fallaciously. Such as in this case, when someone is opposing some good thing on the basis that that good thing might, some day, lead to bad things.

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by jjeaff on Friday April 12, 2019 @11:30PM (#19650945)
Not realizing that many things actually ARE a slippery slope is what has gotten the world into a lot of messes. Nearly every legitimate privacy concern that we have today started out with a legitimate and we'll meaning purpose.

Our entire legal system is predicated on common law precedent. So it is very valid in many cases to argue that allowing something good now, might set us up for something very bad later.

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by pushpop on Saturday April 13, 2019 @03:11AM (#19651510)
What you’ve described there is exactly how bad things come to be.

You think people elect for bad things? Bad governments, bad software or privacy violations? They chose things that are full of rhetoric and promises of good things then those bad things get snuck in off the back off relaxed regulation, or existing software adoption, etc.

Take Facebook as an example, people didn’t sign up to it thinking “I wanted to be tracked around the internet so I can have personalised adverts” nor dis Zuckerburg think “Wouldn’t it be good to create a platform that could latter be used for rigging elections”. No, instead we got there because of a serious of good ideas that slowly got abused.

There is a saying that goes “The path to hell is paved by good intentions.” I’m not a religious man but I think that beautifully illustrates how slippery slopes are not a logical fallacy.

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by steve_taylor on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:41PM (#19650784)
Good things such as trackers ostensibly designed to deliver you relevant content?
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by enraged_camel on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:51PM (#19650807)
No, good things such as telemetry and automated error reporting so that bugs can be fixed effectively and efficiently and everyone is better off for it.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by wolco on Saturday April 13, 2019 @09:43AM (#19652968)
That sounds nice. But could they use this data legally in another way?
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by jlawson on Friday April 12, 2019 @09:47PM (#19650555)
"Slippery slope" is not a fallacy. Life is full of slippery slopes in terms of behavior.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by dymk on Friday April 12, 2019 @09:57PM (#19650590)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_...

No, that still falls into fallacious usage.

The user doesn't justify why the steps of their assertion follow after the other. Just that they... do.

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by steve_taylor on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:44PM (#19650791)
No one needs to justify the "why" when we're talking about a very well trodden slippery slope.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by dymk on Friday April 12, 2019 @11:13PM (#19650883)
Fallacies don't just stop applying when it's convenient to elide justification.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by Sir_Substance on Friday April 12, 2019 @11:26PM (#19650932)
That's true. However, we also don't collect history for the fun of it.

Over the course of the last 20 years, we've seen that once a data collection and digital surveillance framework is put in place, the surveillance tends to expand.

Slippery slope arguments, sans good reasoning, tend to be fallacies. However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that an argument backed by historical record is a slippery slope just because it's predicting an outcome. We might call that the "history is all slippery slopes" fallacy. Stating "this has happened before multiple times before, and each time has lead to x" is a very different argument to stating "this has happened, so the logical extrapolation is x".

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by justatdotin on Saturday April 13, 2019 @02:45AM (#19651458)
if it can be that well trodden, is it really still a slippery slope?
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by mixmastamyk on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:53PM (#19650811)
Overwhelming empirical data across history.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by johncolanduoni on Friday April 12, 2019 @11:11PM (#19650878)
That’s proof of existence of slippery slopes, not of prevelance of hypothetical slippery slopes being realized.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by mixmastamyk on Friday April 12, 2019 @11:25PM (#19650927)
We’re talking about data collection and usage, not possibilities in the universe.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by johncolanduoni on Saturday April 13, 2019 @10:56PM (#19657304)
Exactly, which is why I'd be more interested in concrete commonalities of slippery slopes that were actually realized, and not just a general "history has plenty of slippery slopes".
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by asdfasgasdgasdg on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:21PM (#19650692)
The fallacy is to assume, without evidence, that the slope is slippery. There are plenty of slopes that aren't. Probably most, just you don't think about those because you know they aren't slippery already.

For example, I slept in 'til 8:30 today. OMG, a slippery slope. Next thing you know, I'll be sleeping until 3PM. Til midnight! I will never wake up again. But as it happens, sleeping in isn't a slippery slope. I don't think there's any solid evidence that telemetry is either.

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by iopq on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:45PM (#19650795)
Umm, it's slippery for me. I haven't had a stable sleeping schedule for over ten years. Send help.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by sitkack on Friday April 12, 2019 @10:38PM (#19650770)
This is exactly why I get up a minute earlier each day. As it is, I am waking up tomorrow at 4:39 AM. Mission accomplished.
Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by TimTheTinker on Saturday April 13, 2019 @02:21AM (#19651400)
(10 years into one possible future)

“... and that was me before we had children.”

Re:VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trac... by colordrops on Saturday April 13, 2019 @07:11PM (#19656369)
That's the "hasty counterexample" fallacy.