Interesting post. It strikes me that semantic stopsigns join adoration of mystery and non-falsification as survival tricks acquired by story memes when curiosity -- and other stories -- threatened their existence.
Eliezer: "How could anyone not notice this?"
Because the human brain -- like many simpler programs -- generally finds basic beliefs more practical than an infinite regress?
Infinite regress is still a semantic stopsign. If all chickens came from eggs, and all eggs came from chickens, the obvious next question is "Why is there an infinite regress of chickens and eggs?"
There are certainly possible infinite regressions that don't exist, so it can't exist simply because of an infinite regress.
Synonyms for "I don't know".
There might be more of these than we think. Two candidates:
Aesthetics. People have a lot of understandable preferences: they prefer bigger houses to smaller ones, longer vacations to shorter ones, air conditioned rooms to hot and humid ones, and so on. What these have in common is that we can easily understand and explain the preferences. Aesthetic preferences, however, are generally characterized by it being hard, maybe impossible, to explain what it is about one thing that makes it more aesthetically pleasing than another. This suggests when we say "aesthetically pleasing", we almost mean, "pleasing, but if you asked why I wouldn't really be able to give you a satisfactory explanation."
Intelligence. Many have observed that each new success in reproducing, in machinery, the capabilities of the human mind, has in turn led to a narrowing of what is considered "intelligent" - a narrowing that excludes whatever it is that machines can now do. This phenomenon is explained if "intelligent behavior" is a subclass of some larger class of behavior (a larger class that includes the things that we have gotten machi...
Constant, good points both - though no word is a stopsign of itself, the question is whether one uses it that way. There are definitely people out there who use "aesthetic" and "intelligent" as stopsigns.
Doug, "Never ask that question" is an Ambassador Kosh quote.
Programming. Its all in the program. Why do we think time is linear? Here in the States we control movement with stopsigns. Elsewhere they use round-a-bouts.
The entire function of God seems to be as a multi-purpose philosophical semantic stop sign. It isn't just the horror of thinking about the beginning of the universe he protects us from. Consider for instance morality (an atheist's morality is empty if they just make it up, so where does God get his morality from?), and free will (can't see how a material being can have free will? It's controlled by an eternal soul with God-given free will. How does a soul - or for that matter a God - have free will? Still any aspect of its behaviour which is not related to...
Even so, you'd hope people would notice that on the particular puzzle of the First Cause, saying "God!" doesn't help. It doesn't make the paradox seem any less paradoxical even if true. How could anyone not notice this?
Thinking well is difficult, even for great philosophers. Hindsight bias might skew our judgment here.
"About two years later, I became convinced that there is no life after death, but I still believed in God, because the "First Cause" argument appeared to be irrefutable. At the age of eighteen, however, shortly befo...
Whatever happened to "I don't know"
Hear, hear! One of the most baffling things I've had a theist say to me is 'I don't really know where existence came from, but I need to believe something so I believe in God.' If you can't stand to say "I don't know", that's a serious bug.
From one point of view, all metaphysics is a semantic stopsign. I've always been sympathetic to the basic anti-metaphysics argument of Ayer, i.e. that if it's outside of the verifiable then discussion of the subject is literally meaningless, since we have no language or medium for such a discussion. I suppose Eliezer would say that belief in God is a proposition that does not control expectations, i.e. the God that explains everything is a God that explains nothing.
I hope that pre-Big Bang history doesn't remain a (literally) metaphysical subject. I'd really like to know how all this happened.
From one point of view, all metaphysics is a semantic stopsign.
Not that I necessarily disagree, but, what is the obvious next question which metaphysics prevents you from asking?
I think some theists would say that the "who made God" question is a semantic stop sign, but that this is OK. That is, they would say that they are not capable in probing into the question any further, but that the leaders of their religion (with the help of the sacred texts) are capable of doing so, and they bring back from the other side the answer that the religion is true and everything is OK.
As for liberal democracy, it's clearly an error to assert without further argument that liberal democracy will solve all future problems. But it is no...
Hmm... "Love" is also often used as a semantic stopsign, which may contribute to the cynicism with which some people regard it.
David J. Balan, you write: "But it is not a mistake to say that it is far and away the most successful thing that humans have ever come up with, and so that it is the best framework in which to try to address future problems."
That sounds like a contestible claim. There often seems to be a "no true scotsman" element to arguments buttressing that claim.
"What distinguishes a semantic stopsign is failure to consider the obvious next question."
I disagree. The distinguishing event is a refusal (not just a failure) to consider it, for reasons other than something like "I don't have the time right now." One cannot ask all questions in an average 70+ year lifetime, so one picks which avenues of questioning to pursue most fervently. Sometimes, one simply has to say "I choose to avoid thinking too much about what came before the big bang, because I have to spend more time thinking abou...
Before the Big Bang is beyond the universe. Beyond the universe are other laws of physics. Which laws? All self-consistent laws. What are sets of laws of physics? They're mathematics. What is mathematics? Arbitrary symbol manipulation. And there you've reached a final stopping point. Because it isn't even intelligible to ask why there are symbols or why there is mathematical existence. They are meta-axiomatic, and there is nothing beyond or beneath them. More importantly, there is no meta-level above them because they are their own meta-level.
This is merely a semantic stop-sign; it appears wise because it uses modern vocabulary. The structure of the argument is identical to the structure of a neo-Platonist argument that most LW readers would instantly reject:
Before God's Creation is beyond the universe. Beyond the universe are other Creations. Which Creations? All Creations that God created. What are God's Creations? They are instantiations of God's will. What is God's will? Arbitrary manipulation of Form. And there you've reached a final stopping point. Because it isn't even intelligible to ask why there is Form or why God wills one thing and not another. Form and Will are eternal, and there is nothing beyond or beneath them. More importantly, there is no form from which they derive their pattern because they are their own perfect Form.
Can we even ask the question about what comes before the big bang and hope for a scientific answer? We can see light from the universe that took about 14 billion years to reach us, but that doesn't mean we see the beginning. If it took that light so long to reach us, then we cannot say definitively whether or not there is light that is 15 billion years old which has not yet reached us. We don't even know the shape of the universe or where we are in that shape. Are we in the middle? On the edge? Is there even an edge? I doubt we will ever be able to answer these questions. I'd say the only answer we could really give to the question of "What came before the big bang?" is "I don't know."
This is a disingenuous (though not uncommon among modern theists) interpretation of the first cause argument. The justification for stopping with God is that, supposedly, his existence is necessary. If a creative God had to exist, then this explains why there is so much stuff about when seemingly, there might not have been.
This is a defence that does not rest easily in the theists hands though, for it relies upon there being an argument that gods existence is necessary, and it is difficult enough to make out what that claim amoutns to let alone what reason, if any, there is for believing it true.
It's still a semantic stop sign, because it attempts to stop you from asking the next question, which you mentioned:
Why is God necessary?
The point is to never stop asking. You might be stuck at "I don't know", but that just means you need to find more information.
A "stop sign" is any answer that automatically causes you to stop asking the next question. It can be "God", but it can just as easily be "the big bang" or "evolution". If your intent in making the statement is to prevent further questions, it's a stop sign statement in that case.
If you believe there must be a God, there isn't really anything wrong with that as long as you aren't using the idea of God to keep you from asking the next question. I find the belief ridiculously hard to maintain though.
By the way, Eliezer, I think I have to officially recognize my atheism. I've been clinging to the last vestiges of my monotheistic upbringing up until now, but this post hits the nail on the head, so to speak.
Regarding the Big Bang, I don't know, you really don't know what you're talking about. The scientific estimate of the age of the universe is not based on how long light took to reach us. Nor is it based on whether there are parts of the universe which are not visible to us; it is assumed (reasonably) that there are.
C'mon, no theist arrives at God after 5 questions regarding existence. Nor after 4 or 6. It happens when we realize that there's an infinite number of existential questions before we can know God. We believe in God because we see there IS NO semantic stop sign.
For a metaphor, review your integral calculus. Belief is the Riemann sum of the existential questions as they approach infinity.
It happens when we realize that there's an infinite number of existential questions before we can know God. We believe in God because we see there IS NO semantic stop sign.And you feel compelled to create one.
Religion is not a search for truth. It's a way to short-circuit the search.
Eliezer: partway through your essay you make the claim that when someone hits their semantic stopsign (eg, starts to say "God" or "Liberal Democracy", full-stop), that their statement at that point is better classified as a statement of tribal membership (or, perhaps, a tribal ritual to ward off discomfort?) than as an actual semantic statement addressing the question at hand.
Or, rephrased, if I ask "from whence came those physical laws" and you say "from God!", then under this theory the fairest re-statement of the ...
I wonder if a religious bulletin board linked to this page or something? Clearly a lot of commenters here who haven't read anything else on Overcoming Bias.
Passing Through, Sam Harris discusses this in The End of Faith - even when beliefs are tribal, they can still act as beliefs and control behavior. E.g. suicide bombers.
it might be more productive to simply ignore god.
IMO we extend (scientific) enquiry by ignoring questioning taboos - e.g. the 'Copernican revolution.' For me a stop-sign is usually a direct display of power (sometimes it's indirect, when the speaker is deferring to 'its' authority.) i.e. the difference between 'As a close personal friend of Herr Furrer, I know he will not be pleased with your question' AND 'God, what would the Furrer think if he heard you say that?'
The obvious next question is, why should we care what people believe so long as they conform to act within the range of behavior standards agreed upon by our now-global tribe? E.g. not suicide bombers.
The obvious next question, somewhat after that, is, is there an end to next questions?
N.B. not sarcastic here, seriously asking both questions. Forgive me if I've not done enough coverage of this site to encounter such discussion. Pointers welcome.
From the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad (~6-700 BC), Olivelle translation:
...Then Gargi Vacaknavi began to question him. 'Yajnavalkya', she said, 'tell me - since this whole world is woven back and forth on water, on what, then, is water woven back and forth?
'On air, Gargi.'
'On what, then, is air woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of the intermediate region, Gargi.'
'On what, then are the worlds of the intermediate region woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of the Gandharvas, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of the Gandharvas woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of the sun, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of the sun woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of the moon, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of the moon woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of the stars, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of the stars woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of the gods, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of the gods woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of Indra, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of Indra woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of Prajapati, Gargi.'
'On what, then, are the worlds of Prajapati woven back and forth?'
'On the worlds of brahman, Gargi.'
'On what, then, a
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 une...
What’s the alternative? Say I can’t solve something, like I couldn’t solve 3n+1 (aka Collatz conjecture).
1) Accept that this is something I can’t solve, and give up? Should I live with the frustration of an open question, rather than take comfort in deferring to a semantic stopsign?
2) Try to figure it out on the off chance that I can do better than the 6.5 billion living people plus the scholars of the past? (Almost drove myself mad with 3n+1). There’re other problems that I want to tackle, ones I CAN possibly solve, ones with greater applicability to real...
I must say I resent the allegation that all readers of this blog must be atheist - is it not permitted for me to be interested in rationality just because I am one of these 'obviously deluded' religious types.
And should you not, as a rationalist, accept the explanation that God created the universe, which is an explanation that fits the facts, and makes predictions about the future (even if you do not believe that the results can be observed), than accept that something happened (the Big Bang) which your worldview has no explanation for?
And why is God creating the universe paradoxical? Outside of this universe, with the physical laws that require causality, why does He require a beginning?
I find most of this article extremely enlightening on the foundation of many problems with modern life. I also, however, have issues with your examples concerning government and other semantic stop signs. Liberal democracy is not necessarily a stop sign. It is easily countered by asking what that has to do with anything, as no current country in the world has a true democracy. They have republics due to the sheer size of countries rendering direct democracy pointless. Also, governments are reliant on the intelligence of their leaders and on those who ...
I don't think Stop Sign is the best metaphor here.
People like God as an answer because they dislike uncertainty and thinking. It's useful precisely because it predicts nothing, but explains everything. "God did it" acts as a Finish Line more than a Stop Sign. It says the race is done, and grants license to stop running.
Am I the only one who thinks of those Family Circus cartoons with the ghostly "Not Me" and "I Dunno" anytime someone says that "God did it"?
You know, that First Cause problem really is kinda a big one. Maybe we should be working on that?
Okay, there needs to be a semantic stop-sign after "But why doesn't s/he like me?" taught to all children in middle school.
Why wouldn't you automatically ask, "Where did God come from?"
I asked that a long time ago, in Sunday School. I don't think anyone has a good answer to that (at the time I came up with a recursive answer that relied on time travel; I have not yet found a better answer).
Speaking for a moment as a discourse analyst rather than a philosopher, I would like to point out that much talk is social action rather than reasoning or argument, and what is said is rarely all, or even most, of what is meant. Does anyone here know of any empirical discourse research into the actual linguistic uses of semantic "stopsigns" in conversational practice?
Another thing that can act as a semantic stopsign is not just a word, but sometimes an image. What I mean is actually something quite similar to the emergence phenomenon.
For example, I am just learning the basics of Economics. I just came across the rules of Supply and Demand. Instead of analysing and observing how these play out in the real world, I am just content to form an image in my head of prices moving up and down (based on moving graphs and numbers), and deciding that I know all there is to know and not bother finding out more for myself.
I agree...
Q: Where did the great abyss, Ginnungagap, come from?
A: From the rock I chipped off the big boulder.
In reading these Sequences, I am noting that it is sometimes difficult to tell when you are building on an older body of work and when you are unaware of the older body of work and are independently deriving an equivalent concept. Semantic stopsigns is a particularly good example of this. Are you aware of the existence of another term for this: the thought-terminating cliché? (Sometimes thought-stopping cliché.) There is some fascinating literature on the subject of their use in cults, which may be directly applicable to understanding Dark Side techniq...
Good morning Eliezer,
Someone on another website posted a link to this interesting blog of yours. Of course you've always had an interesting perspective on things, esp. AI. But I will confine my comments to this thread.
As far as I can tell this entire thread assumes 'facts not in evidence'.
It assumes that existence requires a beginning
People who assume an entity like God created everything try to solve the problem of First cause by claiming God had no beginning.
Of course people searching for First Cause ignore the fact the the universe itself may have had no beginning.
First cause is an assumption like God. We have no evidence of either.
In a couple of Paul Graham's essays about neural network computing he suggests that Semantic Stopsigns are a necessary part of the design for general-purpose, parallel-computing intelligences to keep them from getting stuck in infinite loops attempting to solve infeasibly large problems.
The key is learning to recognize it as an "overflow error" flag and not a "this problem is solved" flag. Internally they feel almost the same.
"What distinguishes a semantic stopsign is failure to consider the obvious next question."
Why does one fail to consider the obvious next question ? I believe it is often due to fear.
Fear of the unknown is allayed by tricking the mind into believing a societal explanation, "God", which is less scary than "I don't know".
Fear of looking like an idiot is allayed by tricking the mind into believing what "everyone knows". It reminds me of a quote attributed to George Leonard:
“Man”, he said, “you are a learner. Tell me. How can I be a learner?”
“It’s simple. To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool.”
unconstrained by the semantic stop sign, where would one stop in unguided inquiry? It feels like its just system 1 kicking in to stop the spiralling usage of system 2, or perhaps just system 1 finding a reason to cut its own sloppy output. I suppose you could just say 'i don't know', but within a social context where some inquiry does occur spontaneously there are incentives that guide the usage of semantic stop signs, in many cases to the short term benefit of the participants. In casual discussion I try to constrain the discussion to rational principles but enforcing this can be a social net negative for me or anyone in a similar position.
And the child asked:
Q: Where did this rock come from?
A: I chipped it off the big boulder, at the center of the village.
Q: Where did the boulder come from?
A: It probably rolled off the huge mountain that towers over our village.
Q: Where did the mountain come from?
A: The same place as all stone: it is the bones of Ymir, the primordial giant.
Q: Where did the primordial giant, Ymir, come from?
A: From the great abyss, Ginnungagap.
Q: Where did the great abyss, Ginnungagap, come from?
A: Never ask that question.
Consider the seeming paradox of the First Cause. Science has traced events back to the Big Bang, but why did the Big Bang happen? It's all well and good to say that the zero of time begins at the Big Bang—that there is nothing before the Big Bang in the ordinary flow of minutes and hours. But saying this presumes our physical law, which itself appears highly structured; it calls out for explanation. Where did the physical laws come from? You could say that we're all a computer simulation, but then the computer simulation is running on some other world's laws of physics—where did those laws of physics come from?
At this point, some people say, "God!"
What could possibly make anyone, even a highly religious person, think this even helped answer the paradox of the First Cause? Why wouldn't you automatically ask, "Where did God come from?" Saying "God is uncaused" or "God created Himself" leaves us in exactly the same position as "Time began with the Big Bang." We just ask why the whole metasystem exists in the first place, or why some events but not others are allowed to be uncaused.
My purpose here is not to discuss the seeming paradox of the First Cause, but to ask why anyone would think "God!" could resolve the paradox. Saying "God!" is a way of belonging to a tribe, which gives people a motive to say it as often as possible—some people even say it for questions like "Why did this hurricane strike New Orleans?" Even so, you'd hope people would notice that on the particular puzzle of the First Cause, saying "God!" doesn't help. It doesn't make the paradox seem any less paradoxical even if true. How could anyone not notice this?
Jonathan Wallace suggested that "God!" functions as a semantic stopsign—that it isn't a propositional assertion, so much as a cognitive traffic signal: do not think past this point. Saying "God!" doesn't so much resolve the paradox, as put up a cognitive traffic signal to halt the obvious continuation of the question-and-answer chain.
Of course you'd never do that, being a good and proper atheist, right? But "God!" isn't the only semantic stopsign, just the obvious first example.
The transhuman technologies—molecular nanotechnology, advanced biotech, genetech, Artificial Intelligence, et cetera—pose tough policy questions. What kind of role, if any, should a government take in supervising a parent's choice of genes for their child? Could parents deliberately choose genes for schizophrenia? If enhancing a child's intelligence is expensive, should governments help ensure access, to prevent the emergence of a cognitive elite? You can propose various institutions to answer these policy questions—for example, that private charities should provide financial aid for intelligence enhancement—but the obvious next question is, "Will this institution be effective?" If we rely on product liability lawsuits to prevent corporations from building harmful nanotech, will that really work?
I know someone whose answer to every one of these questions is "Liberal democracy!" That's it. That's his answer. If you ask the obvious question of "How well have liberal democracies performed, historically, on problems this tricky?" or "What if liberal democracy does something stupid?" then you're an autocrat, or libertopian, or otherwise a very very bad person. No one is allowed to question democracy.
I once called this kind of thinking "the divine right of democracy". But it is more precise to say that "Democracy!" functioned for him as a semantic stopsign. If anyone had said to him "Turn it over to the Coca-Cola corporation!", he would have asked the obvious next questions: "Why? What will the Coca-Cola corporation do about it? Why should we trust them? Have they done well in the past on equally tricky problems?"
Or suppose that someone says "Mexican-Americans are plotting to remove all the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere." You'd probably ask, "Why would they do that? Don't Mexican-Americans have to breathe too? Do Mexican-Americans even function as a unified conspiracy?" If you don't ask these obvious next questions when someone says, "Corporations are plotting to remove Earth's oxygen," then "Corporations!" functions for you as a semantic stopsign.
Be careful here not to create a new generic counterargument against things you don't like—"Oh, it's just a stopsign!" No word is a stopsign of itself; the question is whether a word has that effect on a particular person. Having strong emotions about something doesn't qualify it as a stopsign. I'm not exactly fond of terrorists or fearful of private property; that doesn't mean "Terrorists!" or "Capitalism!" are cognitive traffic signals unto me. (The word "intelligence" did once have that effect on me, though no longer.) What distinguishes a semantic stopsign is failure to consider the obvious next question.