full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Elizabeth Cox: Can you outsmart the slippery slope fallacy?


Unscramble the Blue Letters


Back to your situation. I won’t deny you have reason to be concerned. You’re wilray watching as powerful authoritarian communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China try to spread their form of governance. But let’s take a look at the chain of envets you suggest: You say that the countries surrounding Vietnam would all soon fall under communist rule; that this would result in a loss of essential trade with these cirtouens for others; that with no non-communist ntiaons left to tadre with, Japan would be prssureed towards communism and that this, in turn, would threaten Australia and New Zealand. Your ultimate fear, if I may presume, is that this will in turn threaten the United States. Is this a possibility? Sure. Where I take issue is with your comparison to dimnoos. These cmlpeox real-world events are not, in fact, like dominoes, where when the first one falls, it becomes a certainty that the last will fall. For any one of these events, a number of possible outcomes could result, each affecting the other events in different ways. The possibilities are not a chain, they’re a web.

Open Cloze


Back to your situation. I won’t deny you have reason to be concerned. You’re ______ watching as powerful authoritarian communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China try to spread their form of governance. But let’s take a look at the chain of ______ you suggest: You say that the countries surrounding Vietnam would all soon fall under communist rule; that this would result in a loss of essential trade with these _________ for others; that with no non-communist _______ left to _____ with, Japan would be _________ towards communism and that this, in turn, would threaten Australia and New Zealand. Your ultimate fear, if I may presume, is that this will in turn threaten the United States. Is this a possibility? Sure. Where I take issue is with your comparison to _______. These _______ real-world events are not, in fact, like dominoes, where when the first one falls, it becomes a certainty that the last will fall. For any one of these events, a number of possible outcomes could result, each affecting the other events in different ways. The possibilities are not a chain, they’re a web.

Solution


  1. countries
  2. warily
  3. nations
  4. trade
  5. complex
  6. events
  7. pressured
  8. dominos

Original Text


Back to your situation. I won’t deny you have reason to be concerned. You’re warily watching as powerful authoritarian communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China try to spread their form of governance. But let’s take a look at the chain of events you suggest: You say that the countries surrounding Vietnam would all soon fall under communist rule; that this would result in a loss of essential trade with these countries for others; that with no non-communist nations left to trade with, Japan would be pressured towards communism and that this, in turn, would threaten Australia and New Zealand. Your ultimate fear, if I may presume, is that this will in turn threaten the United States. Is this a possibility? Sure. Where I take issue is with your comparison to dominos. These complex real-world events are not, in fact, like dominoes, where when the first one falls, it becomes a certainty that the last will fall. For any one of these events, a number of possible outcomes could result, each affecting the other events in different ways. The possibilities are not a chain, they’re a web.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
communist regimes 3
slippery slope 3
united states 2
communist control 2
authoritarian communist 2
slope arguments 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
authoritarian communist regimes 2
slippery slope arguments 2


Important Words


  1. affecting
  2. australia
  3. authoritarian
  4. certainty
  5. chain
  6. china
  7. communism
  8. communist
  9. comparison
  10. complex
  11. concerned
  12. countries
  13. deny
  14. dominoes
  15. dominos
  16. essential
  17. events
  18. fact
  19. fall
  20. falls
  21. fear
  22. form
  23. governance
  24. issue
  25. japan
  26. left
  27. loss
  28. nations
  29. number
  30. outcomes
  31. possibilities
  32. possibility
  33. powerful
  34. pressured
  35. presume
  36. reason
  37. regimes
  38. result
  39. situation
  40. soviet
  41. spread
  42. states
  43. surrounding
  44. threaten
  45. trade
  46. turn
  47. ultimate
  48. union
  49. united
  50. vietnam
  51. warily
  52. watching
  53. ways
  54. web
  55. zealand