> In almost every case, the feared "bottom" of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.

Perhaps it happens because the slope is called out...

I alternate my thoughts frequently (which I believe is healthy), and sometimes I think we should let things take their course a bit more before reacting. It's certainly tiresome and can be pointless (some people claim 'hysterical') to fight lots of changes, not necessarily this one but some like it.

But I've come to realize there are serious downsides to letting things run their course too. Some changes are very hard to roll back (famous 'cat's out of the bag') just taking a lot of time to reverse if ever. For example, once there is a long term contractual agreement, if one parties decides to roll back they may just not be able to until the contract expires (like renting land; or worse, selling). A change in software systems for example that need backward compatibility can be quite difficult in technical and nontechnical ways.

I think people need to also keep some sympathy for the protests and let people protest more. I'm leaning more toward: if in doubt, provide visibility to a cause (even if not full support). It's okay to save yourself some energy (in particular for the most important causes). Some things might have to run their course for people to understand they were valuable, and we will probably have to eat some frogs as a consequence. Don't lose you sanity ;) (As the saying goes, "Don't you dare go hollow.")

"or the culture shifts to reinterpret the thing"

Yes. You see it already.

"Actually it is good that I can't run programs that haven't been approved by Google on my own device."

There is precedent of Google making changes in light of "security" that break ad blocking Chrome extensions. See chome extension manifest 3.

So this concern cannot be dismissed with just "slippery slope falacy", it's a new vector of the same power grab strategy.

I don't know which timeline you live in, but in mine I've stopped counting how many slippery slopes ended up exactly where the critics said they would.

This is a useless argument since there is no way to measure what case is this and what is not.

You can say "Classic slippery slope fallacy." to whatever seems like that to you.

This is an antipattern to scientific thinking as you can frame something x and then say all x are like this, look I created this framework to think about x. But in reality there is no empirical basis for this thought. And it serves no purpose other than doing more argument or winning arguments.

In the end what you wrote equates to "I don't think all of this will happen".

Chaning many possibilities makes the outcome less and less likely obviously.

Also the same principle applies to most religions I know of, for example:

- Assume there is God

- Assume it did create universe.

- Assume x

...

Then this also fits the same pattern and be called the "x fallacy" but it is useless to create an argument like this. This is useless mainly because this thinking pattern is ubiquitous in any world view.

More productive discussion might be to pick some steps in the theory they chained together and argue on that imo.

Just look at the world around you, the slippery slope "fallacy" stopped being a fallacy long ago.

Is it a fallacy if you've said before that Google is aiming to create a walled garden, Google itself has already started saying it wants a walled garden and they've already implemented several such steps?