Concept · Cognitive Bias: Informal fallacies of presumption
Slippery slope
Origin: Traditional rhetoric; 20th century naming
Biological Parallel
Fire suppression advocates claimed any wildfire leads inevitably to ecosystem collapse, yet forests evolved with fire for millions of years. Lodgepole pine cones require fire's heat to open and release seeds—controlled burns trigger regeneration, not destruction. Biological systems have checkpoints, negative feedback loops, and threshold effects that prevent linear cascades. The slippery slope fallacy ignores what ecologists know: perturbations often stabilize at new equilibria rather than careening toward catastrophe. Intermediate states are not impossible—they're the norm.