The Slippery Slope

Curiously, for this argument, middle positions actually tend to be the most robust to attacks. By, “robust to attacks,” I mean that people who are moderates tend to remain moderates – they may move from moderate liberal to moderate conservative, depending on the issue, but they don’t readily go to extremes. Moderate positions tend to consist of a series of different middle grounds, none of which are entirely dependent on the others for consistency (e.g., abortions should be legal and rare). Thus, even if you can persuade a person that an extreme position would really be better (e.g., don’t worry about “rare,” or that “rare” really would be best achieved by outlawing abortions), the arguments that led to the moderate position functionally “absorb” the attack, and the moderate position stands (“Ok, so we add more constraints – but the legality must remain in order to prevent back-alley abortions, which would be worse”).

Extreme positions, however, tend to be extremely consistent – so consistent that an attack on one chink in the armor can bring the entire edifice crashing down. Continuing with the abortion example, making abortions illegal in 100% of the cases immediately faces strong attacks from people who would rather keep it legal in cases of rape, incest, and murder. A truly extreme example was seen in Mississippi’s whopping defeat of the personhood amendment, which crashed the moment people discussed the possibility, not even the surety, that it would cause problems for birth control, fertility treatments, etc. On the opposite side, if you go to the extreme of the pro-choice side and remove all restrictions, it becomes ridiculously easy to come up with cases where there *should* be restrictions, given the severe psychological impact it often has.

One of the more interesting findings in areas outside economics is that people on extremes relatively often swing from one extreme to another, given that, once you can question one aspect of the bedrock faith, the “bedrock” looks more like quicksand. In an attempt to replicate that absolute black-and-white faith, these people, who often receive comfort from that ease of categorization, go scampering to some other extreme (not necessarily the “opposite pole;” there are plenty of poles around, including the various forms of anarchy, authoritarian movements on right and left, etc.). Moderates, on the other hand, never had that kind of black-and-white view, so having to add more nuance comes fairly easily and is accepted, no faith shaken.

For a physical metaphor, it’s reminiscent of Civil War fortifications: the masonry forts that had been popular got literally pulverized (they were strong – but very brittle and, thus, relatively easy to breach by direct application of cannonshot in one location), while the earthen forts absorbed the cannonshot and, while a bit worse for the wear, survived far harsher attacks.