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PaulAlmond comments on Semantic Stopsigns - Less Wrong
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Eliezer writes: "What distinguishes a semantic stopsign is failure to consider the obvious next question."
I think that you are being unfair here, because you are not reading the fine print. The signs actually read "Stop, then proceed with caution." The subtext is that if you proceed beyond this point, you are going to need a different kind of explanation than the one which has served so far. Ask an atheist where life today came from and he will tell you that it came from past life (and definitely from more than 6000 years ago). Pursue the chain of causality and eventually you will come to a stop sign. "Abiogenesis" says the smart atheist. "Prebiotic soup" catechises the stupid one. These are stop signs, but they are necessary stop signs. They don't so much fail to consider the obvious next question as warn that the obvious next question may be a misleading question. What is going on in the vicinity of the stop sign may be completely different in kind from the kind of thing you are familiar with. Or so claims the stop-sign poster. It is not an explanation, to be sure. But it is something of a hypothesis. Like a notation in the unexplored area of a map. "Here there be phase-transitions."
And if Eliezer believes that defenders of the idea of a First Cause have really failed to consider the obvious next question, then I have to marvel at his lack of scholarship. Hey, I am as atheist as the next guy, but I'm getting pretty tired of finding that all of the negative examples in this series are theists and alchemists. There are plenty more examples of bad thinking to pick on.
What if you are trying to explain evolution to someone and he states "Evolution is just another religion." Is that a stop sign? To me it is, in the sense that the only reason to continue at that point would be to enjoy the sound of your own voice. The person has just signalled his membership in a tribe; you recognize that you are not in that tribe; and you recognize that he will not consider anything further you have to say on the subject, because that would be disloyal to the tribe. Global warming is a religion, taxation is theft, property is theft, healthcare is not a right (I'm not sure if the reverse is used as a flag, too), there is no peace without justice, "allopathic medicine"; there are a lot of them. I'm old enough to remember "The Soviet Union is a state in transition," too. (Sadly, it was in transition to total collapse.) All these statements are what Eliezer calls "Green and Blue" (I think--those are the two chariot racing team colors, right?) markers. I'm not sure if these statements are also semantic stop signs. Anyway, I think that class of statement is very different than statements like abiogenesis or prebiotic soup, because the latter statements indicate that the original topic has been exhausted. That line of reasoning has gone to its logical end, and to continue conversing, we must switch to a different discussion. Not quite the same thing as saying that "tribal loyalty dictates that I do not use reason to consider anything further you say on this subject."
Not necessarily. Maybe you should persist and try to persuade onlookers?