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Thought-Terminating Cliché
- Graziano_M 5y agoWords are violence.
- recursivedoubts 5y agothe #1 thought-terminating cliche I see amongst reasonably intelligent people: conspiracy theory it's amazing how this phrase will shut down critical thought in otherwise smart folks
- ilaksh 5y agoIt's also amazing (but maybe not really surprising) that "conspiracy theory" isn't in the Wikipedia article. I wonder if someone tried to add it already.
- dane-pgp 5y agoMaybe "they" removed it...
- ilaksh 5y agoIf you have ever tried to edit something on Wikipedia, you will know that other people deleting your edits is not uncommon. Or a conspiracy theory. Anyone who uses that word might have felt like they needed to delete it from the article.
- ilaksh 5y agoThis is a previous version where it was in there. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9&oldid=1028079504 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thought-terminati... And the last entry in Talk is about how it was removed.
- still_grokking 5y agoI've upvoted the grandparent as I though "nice joke". Than I've read your comment… There seems to be a reframing of the term "conspiracy theory" going on right now. I've noticed also something odd: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251945
- dang 5y agoThe examples they do give are all bland and unprovocative. There are many more, of course.
- bitwize 5y agoThis is because Wikipedia itself uses "conspiracy theory" to flag ideas its editorship deems should not be taken seriously.
- ineptech 5y agoI don't think this is a good example. If your position is, "We should do X because of Y" and I respond "conspiracy theory", I'm taking the position that Y is inaccurate. You could respond e.g. by citing evidence of it. If OTOH I respond, "Ah, it is what it is", I'm disagreeing that we should do X but without taking any position on Y or explaining why I disagree. That's what TFA is discussing - ways to weasel out of a discussion without being pinned down to a position or an argument.
- HKH2 5y agoNo, 'conspiracy theory' is used more as a cliche now. It is a status-quo preserving device in media narratives, because you don't want to be a flat-earther, right?
- ineptech 5y agoPerhaps, but it's generally done in the context of arguing against the idea. The connotation of a thought-terminating cliche is that it is a dodge, an avoidance strategy. It fills in the space where a real statement would go, and fulfills the social requirement of needing to say something, without saying anything.
- ryandrake 5y agoCritical thought requires falsifiability and evidence, but conspiracy theory only requires belief.
- inter_netuser 5y agoEvery scientific hypothesis starts without evidence. So it must be treated as "conspiracy", and not critical thought, according to you?
- coaksford 5y agoNot being falsifiable and not having evidence aren't the same thing. Conspiracy theories are usually centrally dependent upon something that is both outlandish and impossible to disprove, or some reasoning that is constructed so that it cannot be disproved, as any effort to disprove it is undertaken by "them" by definition and is suspect because they're all in on it the conspiracy. There can be no evidence yet, it becomes a problem when unfalsifiability makes evidence irrelevant.
- rspeele 5y agoExample of unfalsifiability: Alice: Trump won Georgia, but the Dominion voting machines flipped it. Look at how many votes came in for Biden late at night. Bob: It took a long time to finish counting the mail in ballots, and precincts report their results in large batches. Anyway, there was a hand recount of all the paper ballots that were scanned by the machines. If the machines had flipped votes, the paper ballots would still show the originals. Alice: Then the hand recount was faked. Bob: But observers from both parties were present for the recount. By this time the machine flip theory was widespread, so the Republican observers would be on high alert to make sure the recount is right. Alice: Those might not be real Republicans. Like the Secretary of State, they are probably RINOs. Plus the paper ballots themselves were fraudulent. The signatures were faked. Bob: So do you still think the Dominion machines did something wrong, or did they accurately scan the fraudulent paper ballots? Anyway, the state bureau of investigation did a signature audit in Cobb county and found no intentional fraud and only a couple of mistakes where somebody signed for their partner or something. Alice: The GBI is in on it. The fraud was really in Fulton county, so that's where they should've done the signature audit. Didn't you see that batch of secret ballots they hid under a table and pulled out when nobody was looking? Bob: The security camera footage shows that the ballots from under the table are the same ones that were opened from envelopes while the observers were watching. They were just the next batch waiting to be scanned, nothing abnormal about them. The state released the whole footage online, including the parts Trump's lawyers conveniently skipped past. Alice: I know it was stolen. The details of how they did it might never come out, but I can tell Trump really won.
- user-the-name 5y agoOr, maybe you just believe in conspiracy theories that aren't worthy of anyone's attention.
- tptacek 5y agoSo basically, on message boards, the notion of a "Thought-Terminating Cliché" is deployed the same way "Logical Fallacies" are, to appeal to the celestial referees for a TKO in an argument. And in that sense, "Thought-Terminating Cliché" is itself a "Thought-Terminating Cliché", disappearing down its own throat uroborotically†. Neat! † A term that now exists.
- still_grokking 5y agoI would go even so far to say a thought-terminating cliché is always made up from some logical fallacies. Hard to think of an example that isn't.
- recursivedoubts 5y agoI suppose the phrase can reflexive, although I have to admit this is the first time I had heard of the concept, and "cliche" appears to imply long-and-tired usage. It doesn't appear to be a common thought terminator, certainly not on the level of "conspiracy theory", the application of which we have seen, in both extreme and humorous terms, with respect to the covid lab-leak hypothesis, for example.
- beardyw 5y agoSeems that should be "uroborically", not sure where the t came from. "It is what it is" I suppose!
- edanm 5y ago> uroborotically† > † A term that now exists. FYI, by now exists, parent means that he just made it up. I wasn't sure, but according to Google, the only result for this term is this post. Awesome! Going to try and spread it :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diplodocusaur 5y ago1 day ago ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28236851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28236851
- detaro 5y agono discussion, nearly no points, thus irrelevant.
- dang 5y agoHN users appreciate links to previous threads, but only if there are actual comments there. Also, we don't count posts as dupes if the previous post didn't get significant attention. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
- flurie 5y agoI find it interesting that the submitter posted this as a result of deciding that "calories in, calories out" was a thought-terminating cliché[1]. Given that it's a pithy rephrasing of the first law of thermodynamics, I'm curious if the submitter feels the same way about the other laws. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=28246836 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=28246836
- deegles 5y agoResponding to any discussing about weight loss with that phrase fits the description.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoSpecially because humans can't eat all matter. All calories come out, but some are undigested and don't contribute to nutrition.
- flurie 5y agoContinued, sustained discussion predicated on the phrase itself rather seems to disprove your point, doesn't it? Additionally, from the link: > Bennett explains that exceptions are made to the use of phrases, that would otherwise be considered thought-terminating if they are used in addition to evidence or strong claims.
- smorgusofborg 5y agoWhen I hear sports discussions they don't spend a lot of time reminding us that everything is subject to the same gravity. If some jackasses did it would become a thought terminating cliché, and eventually we would be breaking out of it, but it would be tainting the direction of each discussion from the point where it was invoked.
- flurie 5y agoInterestingly, I find myself subject to the opposite quite often. It's a common cliché in the US to describe superlative athletic ability as "defying gravity." Would you consider that a thought-terminating cliché? I'm happy to continue to discuss this with you, but I would ask that you please refrain from name calling.
- hume_annoyed 5y agoFYI "You're overthinking this" is given as if in advice, but it only means 'I am bored, not committed, and/or no longer listening'.
- jka 5y agoIf threads of conversation were series of git commits, then the way to avoid these would be to stop, apply revert(s), and then resume from the previous good-faith, high-value commit. Sadly that's not particularly applicable to linear time-based human conversation, and people exploit that in meetings and other environments to sidetrack, limit and shut down discussion (while it's also true that some tangents are introduced to achieve similar ends). Are there good strategies to 'roll back' while maintaining composure and context during important conversations? Or is it necessary to move the conversations to other (threaded, for example) mediums?
- ilaksh 5y agoGood point. My impression is that it comes down to things like hierarchy, tact, charisma, political acumen. And if someone is deliberately derailing, there might not be an indirect strategy that's effective. You may simply have to bring it up again explicitly. And personally I think that if it's clear someone is interfering then it may be necessary and advisable to call them out on it depending on the urgency. But it's not a minor issue. Something like that can absolutely kill a project or your career. My belief is that they only way to really be free of that is to have the ability to fire people who do too much politicking or whatever. Such as being the boss.
- dane-pgp 5y ago> You may simply have to bring it up again explicitly. Depending on the circumstances, it might be possible to bring up the issue later via email or a group chat, saying something like "One idea from the meeting which I think wasn't fully explored was...". For in-person meetings, though, I think that we can probably learn a lot from the rules of order used in places like parliaments and courts, where discussions are deliberately arranged to be turn-based, with an ostensibly neutral party (the speaker or the judge) who guides proceedings but isn't an active participant in the flow of dialogue.
- darkerside 5y agoI don't know about strategies, but I think the key principle is not to take it personally. It can be difficult when someone is dismissive of something you think is important, but hanlon's razor suggests that you take it as me ignorance. Recognize that this conversation is your opportunity to open their eyes to why something you care about is important.
- narrator 5y agoA related concept is the association fallacy [1], which is a more subtle form of the ad hominem fallacy. It works like this: A. You believe X. B. A crazy person also believes/believed X. C. Since you believe X and a crazy person also believed X, you are a crazy person. D. Optionally: I won't consider your argument unless you tell me why being a crazy person is ok. Why do you support doing crazy people things like being a serial killer? Example: A. You are against cigarette smoking. B. The Nazis were also against cigarette smoking[2]. C. Therefore you are a Nazi. D. Optionally: I won't consider your argument unless you tell me why being a Nazi is ok. Why do you support anti-semitism? The latest updated version of this is: What you believe is arbitrarily labeled a conspiracy theory. People that believe in conspiracy theories believe the earth is flat. Why do you believe the earth is flat? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy#Guilt_by_association_as_an_ad_hominem_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy#Guilt_by_a... [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/251213.The_Nazi_War_on_Cancer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/251213.The_Nazi_War_on_C...
- pjc50 5y ago> A crazy person also believes/believed X. This is more a form of spam filtering; given finite intellectual effort, strangers who talk about certain subjects get ruled out of consideration. Just as sending a lot of mail about Cialis will get your IP on a list.
- miteyironpaw 5y agoIsn't spam filtering a large part of what these clichés are used for, or at least what the people using them think they're for? e.g. "That's just your opinion." "Now is not the time." "Here we go again."
- rspeele 5y agoOn the other end, how about: A. The mainstream media, M, is biased and sometimes delivers incomplete or inaccurate information. They tell $mainstream_story. B. Alternative source, A, rejects $mainstream_story and says that actually, $alternative_story is the truth. C. Any data M points to to debunk $alternative_story and support $mainstream_story is assumed to be fake or manipulated, because M lies. D. There is no need to apply the same skepticism to A and their arguments, because by going against M, they have already demonstrated that they are "good guys".
- motohagiography 5y agoWas introduced to this concept some years ago, and have found since that challenging a thought-terminating cliché is seldom welcome. In group settings and often on teams, most people are content to be aligned to the perception of what represents power, with no thought as to whether it is moored to reality, truth, or has consistency with anything external. These clichés are a mechanism that facilitates that non-relationship to the world. A friend recently observed that he had more in common with people in his opposite political tribe than he did with ostensible centerists, and he said it was because the people on the other team also believed something, where the ones in the middle were in-effect, nihilists, or believing nothing. I mention it because when I thought of nihilisim, I always interpreted it as an active kind of anti-belief, or against all belief, instead of a bland passivity, detached from a moral anchor or foundation. For this kind of nihilist, the thought-terminating cliché is the necessary boundary of their ontology about the world. It's the person saying, "it is what it is," as they do horrible things. If you have ever spent time in bureaucracies, it is easy to see how a bunch of people trained to accept small injustices passively can be mobilized into an atrocity machine. They're "de-moralized," which we misuse to describe frustrated efforts, when what it means is that by lacking roots to beliefs and replacing them with this thought-termination, they do not exercise moral agency. They're just following orders. I've concluded the clichés are worse than thought terminating, they are jingoistic slogans of nihilism people repeat to justify and release themselves from moral agency. All this is to say, it's an important concept. Thought-terminating clichés are the mental reference points for the origins of what we understand now as the banality of evil.
- ehnto 5y agoI have noticed it's more prevalent in people with very strong routines, perhaps mundane jobs and a very structured life. I imagine it's because they've got strong incentive to maintain the status quo but they're also tired of talking about the same thing over and over, so they serve as social shortcuts to getting to a new topic (or getting you to go away). One other thing I see it used for is to divert from negative topics people are tired of re-hashing. Talking about drought in a farm town gets pretty tiresome as the months go on, that's when you start getting the "it is what it is" statements. They care really, they just gain nothing from talking about it constantly.
- jrootabega 5y ago"Thought-Terminating Cliché" is also an autological term: it can describe itself.
- onoira 5y ago> It's nothing personal. > I'm just saying. > No need to get defensive. > I never said I didn't like it.
- darkerside 5y agoIf you say so. Let's table it. Anyway. So... how about them Yankees?
- adamrezich 5y agodisappointed to see 0 results for CTRL+F "emotion." it's not so much that the cliché "terminates your thought" these days as much as it is that it triggers a learned emotional response to the trigger stimuli that then results in a cessation of any logical processing. when I first noticed this around 2016 I became very aware of it whenever I encounter it, and have since become aware of just how many of these trigger-responses I've unwittingly learned over the years, leading me to do what I can to avoid this style of thinking.
- wwarner 5y agoOoh that pushed my buttons. When someone responds to me with one of these phrases, it gets my hyper-logical dander up!
- at_a_remove 5y agoI will throw out a personal un-favorite. When talking about the fear of violence from the mentally ill, someone will say -- almost as if the string were pulled on a talking doll -- "the mentally ill are more likely to be subject to violence than to ..." and away we go. It may be true, but it does not actually address the question. The question is, are they more violent than those who are not mentally ill?
- da_chicken 5y agoI would say the most common one IT people would be familiar with is: "We've always done it this way."
- twic 5y ago"It's best practice" might be even more lethal. Or "It's how Google do it" if you're in Silicon Valley.
- mindcrime 5y agoOr if you're in management: "Forrester recommended doing it this way" or "Gartner recommends adopting this", etc.
- ballenf 5y agoI thought it was "let's put it in the backlog".
- jacobsimon 5y agoLOL
- the_af 5y agoThat's not thought-terminating, it's just a postponement, and it can be argued against (e.g. "no, it's urgent because of X, let's bump something else"). Contrast this with "best practices", which most people seem afraid to argue against for fear of being singled out as bad developers.
- maleldil 5y agoTo be fair, people don't often challenge that. I usually say "It's how I'm used to doing it, but I'd be happy to hear a better alternative". I don't think anyone ever offered one.
- myWindoonn 5y agoThis need not be thought-terminating. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_... situations.
- the-dude 5y agoBut that is just communism.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoprevious related discussion only 4 months ago: What are some thought-terminating clichés in the software industry? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27012428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27012428 and earlier only a year ago a few discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22722522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22722522
- kazinator 5y agoThought-terminating EE dad joke: If your thought bus isn't terminated, you will get unwanted reflection.
- okareaman 5y agoOne I see a lot of these days is "An X would say that" as in "a MAGA Trump supporter would say that" or "a far left liberal would say that" implying that whatever was said was made up dogma with no basis in reality.
- musicale 5y agoThat's just the sort of thing that an evil alien robot would say.
- MarkLowenstein 5y agoWhatever.
- still_grokking 5y agoThere is nothing to see here, please move on.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoMy all time favorite: "you'll understand when you will be X" At the beginning, I really took it at face value, and patiently waited until I was X. Older. In a relationship. Having my own business. I was very naive, I though people shared experience and knew something about life. Every time I ended up being disappointed when reaching the point X actually prove the other side was full of crap. I didn't understand that it was only a way to stop the conversation. It had nothing to do with logic, it's a matter of saving face, getting out of a boring interaction, or about power. A lot of human interactions are like that: if you think people means what they say, you are misunderstanding the communication. I used to take so many things literally, I though people chose their words for their dictionary sense. Turns out only a small part of communication is actually about the literal sense of words, like technical documentation or giving direction to reach the bakery, which I'm good at. It's also a fact that is obvious to most humans, although they are mostly oblivious to their own fluency, since it's as transparent as walking to them. People on the autistic spectrum, however, need to figure it out. But don't worry, you'll understand it all when you will be Z.
- dweekly 5y agoThis insight is clearly illustrated in one of my very favorite songs from Disney: https://youtu.be/MJV4vjlziNI https://youtu.be/MJV4vjlziNI
- nerdponx 5y agoI don't know. There are a lot of times when I was told "you'll understand when you're older/more experienced/whatever" and... yeah, they were right. Usually "older" was a proxy for something like "had X and Y specific experiences and N years to develop perspective". It probably depends on who is saying it and why. I wouldn't go through life assuming that it's always bad; it might just clumsy.
- lamontcg 5y agoRidiculous. End of.
- tedd4u 5y agoIs "fake news" the newest thought-terminating cliché?
- dredmorbius 5y agoDepending on who's using it and how, it's more a co-option / corruption of an earlier concept (the term dates to the 1980s, originally to commercially prepared video and audio news releases presented on local news programmes as actual reporting), and a distraction. Less a thought-stopper in my book.
- maniq 5y agoA commonly heard one in these modern times, when people try to deny material biological reality in favour of dubious, quasi-religious metaphysical claims: "Transwomen are women, transmen are men."