"My Rapist Doesn't Know He's A Rapist"

[Igel]

16. The argument's extendible.

Most don't. And when you try, you get strange results.

Leave the windows down to your car, the diamonds on the front seat next to the keys and the Wii, and when they're stolen few say, "How horrible. Property is inviolate, and you did nothing foolish or imprudent."

If a teacher leaves an answer key to the final on his desk first thing in the morning and by 3rd period the students have spread around the answers, they've broken the rules. They may be punished. But you know that the principle won't tell the teacher, "You acted wisely and without blame. Who could have predicted that the kids would be dishonest?"

It's a slippery-slope argument. They're slippery. Usually it means that there's some undefined term in the argument just asking to be explicated. So it is in this case.

Try this one. Banking regulations don't matter. Honest bankers will behave honestly; dishonest ones will behave dishonestly. The weak regulations were just an excuse for dishonest bankers to do what they'd have done anyway, and stronger regulations wouldn't have helped in the least.

See? That's one's just plain distasteful. Parallel, but distasteful. That's a clue that there's something missing in the logic.

There's the severity of the outcome and the predictability of outcome. If a bad outcome is severe but not very likely, we like to have laws and behavior altered to avoid the bad outcome. If bad outcome isn't very severe but is common we expect people to alter their behavior to avoid the bad outcome. Most people don't like to be told to alter their behavior and are left with temptation and opportunity are unrelated to the crime because in some cases temptation and opportunity are fairly unrelated. However, we accept it in many cases. If you leave all your presents in the trunk, with the trunk open, most people blame themselves and not the thief.

When assigning blame, there's often more than 100%. Leave your presents out in high-crime area and the thiefs shouldn't steal them, but you're also responsible. It's not split 50-50 or 60-40, it's split 100-40 (as a guess). This works out bad in liability awards, but works well in a lot of other areas.