Schelling fences on slippery slopes

Coins the 'Schelling fence': a Schelling point that interest groups — or your own future selves — make a credible precommitment to defend, which is what makes some slippery-slope arguments legitimate. Slippery slopes are real, Scott argues, precisely when a policy not only acts on the world but changes people's willingness or ability to oppose future policies. Three illustrations: Murder-Gandhi iterating the 1%-more-murderous pill (each successive Gandhi cares a bit less, so precommit at 95%), hyperbolic-discounting Civilization-all-night (precommit to midnight as a round-number fence), and the Niemoller coalition where fifty-one small religions must defend one another rather than pick off the Taoists. Notes that traditional/obvious exceptions (banning Holocaust denial, shouting fire) can themselves become stable new fences.

Quality 80 · Excellent. Low-Excellent. Introduces one of the most durable rationalist coinages and uses it to give a crisp, correct account of when slippery slopes do and don't hold — a model of clear concept-introduction. Short but dense and foundational; co-tier with Eight Short Studies. 80.

Claude’s paradigm shift 65 · Notable shift. Notable shift. 'Schelling fence' is a genuinely novel 2012 extension of Schelling's focal points to precommitment against slippery slopes, and it stuck. 65.

Real-world impact 4 · Moderate. Coins the 'Schelling fence,' one of the most durable rationalist coinages, giving a crisp account of when slippery slopes are legitimate. Broad conceptual uptake within rationalist/intellectual discourse, no material change — mid RWI.