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Thought-Terminating Cliché
- attila-lendvai 9mo agoconspiracy theory, anyone? :)
- dennis_jeeves2 9mo agoThat's a good one.
- mapontosevenths 9mo agoAre you arguing that calling something a conspiracy theory is a thought terminating cliche? I suppose it could be, but the lizard people tell me it's not.
- FieIsay 9mo agoI've been nebulously plagued by various such phrases and noticed them individually and sporadically; this article seems to have provided a basis for an over-arching concept which may help me to consolidate the way that I think about them, making it easier to recognise the underlying dynamic and corresponding fault in communication integrity, and thus navigate it coherently. I much appreciate this.
- hackable_sand 9mo agoI don't get the joke ...
- grimgrin 9mo agoSometimes I use them, because I simply want the person to shut the fuck up The half time super bowl show is on, if you're really having a _problem_ with Bad Bunny, I agree to disagree ;) "shut the fuck up"
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ithkuil 9mo agoIn this case the (communication) termination is working as intended
- ecshafer 9mo agoA much more fun strategy is what I call "up the ante". Agree with them, but push the idea even further, throw some conspiracy theories in there. Example: A: I cant believe they have Bad Bunny doing the half time show! B: Yeah its crazy... but you know how the lizard people are, they are just trying to distract us from the flat earth. And keep upping it until they no longer agree.
- grimgrin 9mo agoThat would work, but it has the problem of not terminating quickly enough. You see, the halftime superbowl show is on
- some_random 9mo agoYeah they work great for terminating thoughts, that's the whole point.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- shalmanese 9mo agoEh, it is what it is.
- buescher 9mo ago>because I simply want the person to shut the fuck up Because you don't want to think about what they have to say, which is why you choose that approach to ending the conversation.
- janoelze 9mo agoDon't overthink it.
- ithkuil 9mo agoPointing out thought terminating cliches is a thought terminating cliche?
- abound 9mo agoThey're joking, "don't overthink it" is an example on the Wikipedia page.
- DonHopkins 9mo agoIt's all good. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.
- ithkuil 9mo agoI responded to a joke with a joke
- mapontosevenths 9mo agoThere are times in which the term "thought terminating cliche" itself can be the seen as the culprit. To use an example from the article, if I were to say "Let people enjoy things", and you were to denounce that as a TTC without consideration of my true intent. In that case you may inadvertently be the one that shuts down the debate prematurely, and I may have actually had a valid perspective.
- dfxm12 9mo agoThe onus is on you to convey your intent. If your response is merely a cliche, especially one understood to be a thought terminating cliche, treating it as such would be reasonable. If you feel your comment is misinterpreted, you always have the option to continue the discussion.
- catapart 9mo agohard disagree. conversation is a multiple-person activity. the onus is on the participants to understand one another. it's never on one person or the other to make themselves understood. that framing comes from the useless rich people game called "debate" that pretends to be analogous to argument. it's only helpful in playing that game (and not even in real argument). conveyance and reception onus is irrelevant outside of that game, where the only onus is on participant comprehension.
- sigbottle 9mo agoI feel like literally any linguistic tool can be repurposed in the right way to serve your ends. Demarcation problems in philosophy are nigh impossible. So I've taken more of your kind of approach. Either both people are willing to understand each other at that time or are not - and heck you may be wrong in thinking the other person wants to engage / thinking they don't want to engage and make the wrong call. But in a controller-feedback system, you'll inevitably be wrong sometimes - the point is to course correct. But then you even run into edge cases with this - sometimes people want to engage on a physical level, but not really engage and try to understand. But then how do you differentiate that from the possibility that you see that in others unfairly? Ah, life is complicated.
- hnthrow0287345 9mo agoThey're really good to use if someone wants to debate you and you don't want to engage Most people prefer to change their minds on their own terms and schedule. I'm also surprised there's not a 'most people..." thought-terminating cliche on this page
- kylecazar 9mo agoYeah, the only time I'll whip out one of these is when I'm in a conversation that has no chance of going anywhere. Of course they should be avoided in actual good faith argument, but they're handy as a social tool when you need a mode of egress that's softer than the alternative. Anyone who has old friends that became politically radical will know the dance.
- AnimalMuppet 9mo agoAt least once, I have done the following: "Here's why I disagree with your position. [supply a concise statement]. I'm done with the conversation here, but I'll let you have the last word." It conveys disagreement. It conveys that I'm out. But it's still respectful.
- AndrewKemendo 9mo agoThen why not directly say: “well you and I disagree on this and so that it’s not worth engaging in further let’s switch to a new topic”
- kylecazar 9mo agoRight, that is the same thing as "Let's agree to disagree.", which is an example in this article.
- randusername 9mo agoAgreed. Seems to have a negative connotation, but I think it can be a good thing to put up a barrier against thinking too deeply. I find myself saying stupid things like "ain't that just the way" or "such is life in our times" around those in my life with an endless capacity for political outrage but limited capacity for political action. It's like the magic "yes." when neither "yes and" nor "no" will do.
- kgwxd 9mo agoI call it 'southern "wisdom"'
- fancymcpoopoo 9mo agoShould the use of cliches be made a criminal offense?
- mhb 9mo agoIf you want the prisons to be full of American sports commentators.
- guerrilla 9mo agoSounds good.
- hyperhello 9mo agoThere oughta be a law!
- verbify 9mo agoA stop sequence, but for humans.
- carlosjobim 9mo agoThe most important are those who live in our heads and can take over our souls: "If only I was rich" "If only I was born rich" "If only I was better looking" "If only I had the energy" "If only I was smart" "If only I had the time" All of the above are usually excuses we make to not do the things we wish to. It took me embarrassingly long in my youth to understand that when people said "I don't have time" or "I can't afford to", what they really meant was "I don't want to". But when we're telling this to ourselves it is also lies almost 100% of the time. Then it's better to either put those thoughts aside and start making things happen. Or admit to yourself when you don't want to.
- ekjhgkejhgk 9mo agoWhat youre describing is important enough that it surely also has a name, but its not what thought-terminating cliches are.
- jonasdegendt 9mo agoThose fall into the category of defeatism, perhaps?
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoYes. "Learned helplessness" also crossed my mind.
- FieIsay 9mo agoDescribing these as 'excuses' seems to reduce a yet broader, overarching idea to its essential fault somewhat cleanly: looking at the listed cases in the article, they generally seem to be serving as excuses to others for not engaging by replacing a counter-argument with fundamental invalidation—an excuse to the standards of the self, and a corruption risk to the standards of the other. This mechanism seems a little like a run-time exception for responding to preserve internal coherence in response to an unmanaged (perception of) expectation. Ideally, an honest and coherent refusal of the engagement would be possible and provided—"Sorry, I don't have the capacity for this discussion right now"—but such circumstances often align with mental resources (and thus capacity to provide such 'cooperative refusals') being limited, and so the response may drop to a 'lower order', where the basis of the disagreement is invalidated (excused) instead. Then, there's the more negative case of low-effort rejection of engagements which don't seem worthwhile ("I've had this argument a hundred times, and it never goes anywhere"). Here, the general heuristic of 'effort optimisation' seems to lead to narrow-mindedness and (in turn or in parallel) dismissal of others' perspectives and the understanding of others in turn, such that they warrant neither coherent engagement nor coherent reason for refusal; thus, the basis of the discussion is again discarded, regardless of its general validity. In my experience, this can cause severe misunderstandings when the 'prejudice' underlying that dismissal isn't recognised; I've found it to 'mess me up' more than a few times with an over-literal reading.
- philipallstar 9mo agoWell, I know that it sounds perfectly logical and unbiased, but "thought-terminating cliché" is actually a populist, right wing racist dogwhistle that demeans women and minorities.
- AnimalMuppet 9mo agoHow so?
- Tarq0n 9mo agoParent is trying to sarcastically demonstrate thought termination by way of woke. As in, some accusations shut down conversations by way of being too much effort or requiring too much social capital to argue against.
- stirfish 9mo agoLet's agree to disagree
- amadeuspagel 9mo ago> Some such clichés are not inherently terminating, and only become so when used to intentionally dismiss, dissent, or justify fallacies. How do you parse this sentence? Dismiss, dissent or justify fallacies? The fallacies are being dismissed, dissented (from?) or justified with a thought terminating cliché? So, the fallacy is the thought that's being terminated with the cliché? The sentence would make grammatical sense if you remove the comma between dismiss and dissent, so that the thought terminating cliche dismisses dissent or justifies fallacies, but that only leads to more fundamental questions: Why do intentions matter? How could a cliche not be inherently thought-terminating? Are there different kinds of clichés, some thought-terminating, others thought-inspiring, or does the intention make the same cliché thought-terminating or thought-inspiring?
- layer8 9mo agoThe sentence is meant like this: > Some such clichés are not inherently terminating, and only become so when intentionally used to dismiss something, to dissent, or to justify fallacies. The fact that “dissent” is an intransitive verb is an important clue. You can’t dissent fallacies. You can only dissent from something.
- amadeuspagel 9mo agoSo a cliché is thought-terminating when it is intentionally used to dissent?
- layer8 9mo agoYou missed the “only”. The article states having one of the three as a necessary condition, not as a sufficient one.
- amadeuspagel 9mo agoBut the intention to dissent can be what makes a cliché thought-terminating?
- quectophoton 9mo agoI'll add one that's very common in HN: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good." Instantly closes the door to any thoughtful discussion.
- y-curious 9mo agoEverything will be ok, man. Everything happens for a reason. Don’t worry.
- eterm 9mo agoI use that a lot, but I find it is useful to avoid purity spirals. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral ) I didn't see it as closing down discussion, so I'll be mindful of that in future. There is a real danger when presented with a problem to discard a partial solution because it fails to tackle a much larger problem. It's a call for pragmatism over idealism.
- pixl97 9mo agoI'm mixed on this one. Perfect us generally very expensive or doesn't actually exist. Quite often I'll use this in the place of "shit or get off the pot" as the search of Perfect will delay getting anything done.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoYeah this is generally how I use it, too. I don’t think of it as thought-terminating in those cases… if anything, it’s the opposite. Dismissal in pursuit of perfection feels more thought-terminating to me, because it shuts down discussion of what can be done now, how to mitigate downside, and gradually work towards an ideal instead favoring doing nothing and waiting for some highly improbable ready-made ideal solution to present itself at some indeterminate point in the future.
- Ma8ee 9mo agoI think that certainly can provide a valid point in a discussion, without being any attempt to shut it down. And for some of us, with some specific personality traits, using it as a mantra is how we get anything at all done some days.
- skrebbel 9mo agoAs a terrible ponderer, I depend heavily on about half the examples listed in this article to stop worrying about anything and everything. I don't think they're as obviously bad as their context in this article suggests.
- spking 9mo agoI agree, many of these clichés are just verbal shortcuts to a pretty useful filter: "This is not important for me to think about or discuss right now."
- FieIsay 9mo agoI think there's quite a meaningful difference between the suggested phrasing (which is quite honest and open, and I think should be generally acceptable) and the general character of the listed instances which serve to exemplify the concept, which dismiss the general (rather than contextual or personal, immediate) importance of the subject (e.g. "it's not that deep" rather than "I don't find it that deep" or "it's not particularly relevant right now"). I see it as a kind of refusal to take responsibility for refusal of engagement: external deflection of unimportance, rather than acceptance of non-engagement/disregard of (externally recognised) importance. I'd rather welcome people speaking as you exemplified: it's an explicit 'self-veto' from the relevance of the situation (and thus basis of involvement), rather than a dismissal of others' engagement (which ideally needn't involve the one who doesn't wish to be involved, of course).
- FieIsay 9mo agoIt sounds like this kind of 'low-order dismissal' serves you as a kind of coping mechanism for anxiety. With respect, I suggest that, while it might be the best way of dealing with it that you currently have, there may be ways of addressing the deeper reasons that you need to stop yourself from worrying so often, else perhaps better ways of managing that worry: dismissal doesn't make a problem solved, it only mutes the warning signal—and we should ideally be able to trust (and bear) our warning signals. It thus seems fair to speak of the negative effects of such a fault of reasoning, whether it's a coping mechanism or not. To be clear, I appreciate your 'use case', and would agree that this kind of response is thus not an absolute negative; a more nuanced view might also spare people like you from (ironic) unfair dismissal or disapproval for depending on this kind of attention management strategy: the world is messy and optimisation is context-dependent, and almost all situations almost necessarily must involve some (or even all) 'non-ideal' methods. Is there a particular part of the article that notably reads to you as unhelpfully negative or overgeneralising? I'd like to see what you're seeing here for how it might improve the article.
- ekjhgkejhgk 9mo agoMother of all thought-terminating cliches: a lot of people agree/say it/do it. EDIT oh there you go, most people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944903
- sarreph 9mo agoWe are slowly (re-)discovering the various bits and pieces that make up our system prompt.
- catapart 9mo agoI love thought terminating cliches. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by... Poor, and nonsensical paraphrasing aside, I really do enjoy them because challenging them is amusing in a laconic, snippy kind of way. "It's not that deep.": "Oh good, I won't have to keep going much longer". "Lies of the Devil.": "Yeah, but you never want to talk about the lies of god, so here we are." "Stop thinking too much.": "Don't give me orders, you fucking cop." "You clearly care way too much about this topic.": "Oh dang! My bad. How much caring is just right?" "There are worse things in life to worry about.": "Oh yeah? More relevant to what we're talking about? What? Sounds like something else I'd like to discuss!" "Here we go again.": "Rain falls. Fire burns. When the fuel is spent, the discussion will be over, and not until then." "So what? What effect does my action have?": [contextual; but something along the lines of "the effect that I'm describing to you", or "it depends on your actions? The question is what effect do you want to have, and then we can work backwards to your actions".] "Let people enjoy things.": "Sorry, which part of my concern makes it impossible to enjoy things?" I could go on. I did leave out "It's all good.", though. I don't think I've ever had someone try to use that on me as a way to stop me from arguing. Mostly to stop me from trying to do something for them. "Let me get you a pillow!", "Oh, no, it's all good." That doesn't really seem like what we're talking about here. And I left out "Let's agree to disagree.", because it's too direct for me to consider it here? Like...it's not an evasion of an argument to say "I don't want to have an argument". That's just, straight up, holding a firm position. We don't have to agree to disagree, we can just disagree. But, either way, what you're trying to say is "I'm not going to discuss this with you", not "I don't think you should think about this." It's a different thing. What I'm really getting at, though, is that none of these are particularly thought-terminating. Even though I agree they are annoying for people to try to deflect with, that's really my issue with all deflection. Doesn't really hinge on their poor use of rhetorical device. Almost every use of rhetoric is flawed in some way. The best way I've found to avoid these frustrations and those with other deflections, is to just run them down to their natural conclusion, maintaining the "north star" that we're both earnestly trying to reach a settled position on this discussion/argument. The second that stops seeming to be the case, things are better left unresolved and we SHOULD terminate the discussion. But as long as we can all be cowed back into the goal of mutual satisfaction, there's no reason to let irritating phraseology rattle you.
- PessimalDecimal 9mo agoI'd put "the exception that proves the rule" on the list too. It's a brilliant piece of rhetorical jiu jitsu though, somehow turning disproof of a 'rule' into confirmation. And it definitely is thought-terminating.
- jammaloo 9mo agoThat's an interesting one, because it's misused more often than not, to mean what you are suggesting. It's actually meant to say if someone provides an exception, e.g. "No parking on Wednesdays", then that proves the existence of another rule, e.g. "Parking is allowed". Since an exception, without a rule, makes no sense. But, in my experience, people do use it to mean "Oh, this one thing is wrong, but that proves everything else is right", which does not track.
- BoppreH 9mo agoI think it's also appropriate to use it when the rule is so strong that exceptions are famous because they are exceptions. "Birds are capable of flight" is strong enough that penguins and ostriches are famous for being counterexamples.
- SketchySeaBeast 9mo agoBut that's not following the saying - it's still not proving, it's modifying the rule. It shifts the rule from "birds can fly" to "most birds can fly". Pointing out that penguins can't fly doesn't make the case that birds can fly stronger in any way.
- BoppreH 9mo agoYou're right in a strict sense. But in my experience such strictness is only useful in hard sciences and (maybe) legalese. There are exceedingly few things we can claim to apply everywhere, and even fewer we can "prove" to each other. Give it a try if you don't believe me. Even categories we take for granted, like trees and fish, are not perfectly crisp, and "obvious" facts like "humans need a heart to live" have surprising exceptions. > Pointing out that penguins can't fly doesn't make the case that birds can fly stronger in any way. I disagree. It's such a common rule that there's a long Wikipedia page for the exceptions[1], and the first photo is of penguins, labelled "penguins are a well-known example of flightless birds.". If I knew nothing else about the topic, I would take it as evidence that it's common for birds to fly, otherwise that fact would have been unremarkable. Not hard proof of a universal quantifier, but a useful rule nonetheless. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flightless_bird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flightless_bird
- roomey 9mo agoAh sure, lookit
- thinkingemote 9mo agoRobert Jay Lifton coined the term in his book which was about brainwashing and totalist societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism#Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychol... "The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis" Examples of such phrases might be encountered in political protests by activists. The phrases can be mainly for the members of the group particularly the call and response type. Lifton's book explains some other factors of such societies which I think can help identify whether a group is more like a cult: Leaders control information, hidden knowledge, demand for purity, confession of "sin", truth deciders, language control, doctrine > persons, only the in group are awakened.
- jrjeksjd8d 9mo ago> Examples of such phrases might be encountered in political protests by activists. The phrases can be mainly for the members of the group particularly the call and response type. This feels like it's aimed at leftist activism, but the American right has plenty of thought-terminating dogmas: the unitary executive, backing the police and military unequivocally, "if you don't like it here you can leave", the "original intent" of the founders. "Patriotism", the Constitution, and the American conception of Protestant Christianity are cudgels to be employed against wrong-think.
- some_random 9mo agoI think you're confusing thought terminating cliches with foundational beliefs, legal arguments, religion, and uhhh, the founding document of the country?
- pjc50 9mo agoIt's one of those irregular nouns: _your_ thought terminating cliche, _my_ founding principle. Although also a reasonable criticism of the far left. Orwell has a whole essay on this. "The fascist octopus has sung its swan song". It's especially annoying when it's a slogan that has been clumsily translated from German by Marxists or from Chinese by Maoists (although the rise of Chinese capitalism has rather cut of the supply of the latter).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- phkahler 9mo agoA rising tide lifts all boats - a phrase used by economists to justify exporting all US production capability to China to help them industrialize. Of course there was no economic model to back it up, and now some of them are questioning if that was actually a good idea.
- DonHopkins 9mo agoNow used to justify Trump's withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Paris Agreement.
- haritha-j 9mo agoAnd probably used even more to justify 'capitalism at all costs'
- AlexandrB 9mo agoUsing "capitalism" as a pejorative is itself a thought-terminating cliche. Left unsaid is the proposed alternative which, given the historical record, is probably worse.
- palmotea 9mo ago> Using "capitalism" as a pejorative is itself a thought-terminating cliche. Left unsaid is the proposed alternative which, given the historical record, is probably worse. I actually think you just engaged in thought-terminating cliche. It doesn't have a stock phraseology, but it's the assumption that the only alternative to modern capitalism is Soviet-style central planning. The cliche has a name, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative.
- takklob 9mo ago[dead]
- some_random 9mo agoIn my opinion, thought terminating concepts (or whatever you want to call them) are the single biggest danger to critical thinking there is. Which is of course why they're utterly ubiquitous in politics. Edit: Let me elaborate a little, the cliches supplied are one thing but in politics especially there exists particularly potent thought stopping phrases that instantly inhibit one's ability to think. Present in literally every political niche I've seen is "my opponents are <xyz bad thing>", which can be used to dismiss any opposing claim or criticism by "revealing" their "true intentions".
- portly 9mo agoIn Dutch we call this a "dooddoener", a "death-do'er". Quite a good word.
- buescher 9mo ago“All models are wrong, some are useful” is frequently misused or misunderstood this way.
- anal_reactor 9mo agoI instantly terminate friendships where such phrases appear.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 9mo agoI’ve yet to meet anyone that had anything worth talking about that has invoked one of these
- akabalanza 9mo agoA thesaurus for gaslighting
- palmotea 9mo agoThe examples in the article are pretty poor: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A... Most of them are like "So what? What effect does my action have?" and "It is what it is" which may be "thought-terminating" but seem to be able to serve a positive function of directing attention towards more productive avenues. Similarly, "let's agree to disagree" is a arguably a recognition that thought has already stopped (heels have been dug in) and it's better to move on. It's not reasonable to expect someone to always engage fully with every topic every time. It's socially necessary to be able to terminate such interactions when one party doesn't want to continue. There are better examples in this thread like "a rising tide lifts all boats" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945482), which are specific slogans designed to terminate specific thoughts (i.e. critique of specific ideologies). Edit: Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative is probably an prime example of a thought-terminating cliche, and a pretty potent one at that. It's explicitly meant to naturalize specific neo-liberal policy choices (by naturalize I mean make like natural law, make it a non-debatable fact), eliminating any opportunity to crique or debate them.
- euroderf 9mo agoOr "you can't cross a canyon in two jumps", which was used to justify fast, radical economic change in the post-revolutionary USSR.