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There 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

There 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 8mo ago
The 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 8mo ago
  hard 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 8mo ago
    I 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.
    - catapart 8mo ago
      Personally, I just go for "plateaus of understanding". As a filthy socialist in a deep red area, I never had a chance at convincing people all in one go. So I give them just enough that they'll come back around for another bite at convincing me why I'm wrong. Where I'm from, that mostly looks like waiting on the news cycle to say something bad about a democrat and then letting them bring it up purely to dunk on me, rather than to actually engage with the conversation. So I take the opportunity to redirect the dunk. "Oh, that IS bad. Wow, they really fucked up. Isn't this like how So and So did something similar?" Now they are explaining to me the nuances of difference between the situations. That's what they'll remember later - the arguments THEY made. And when they start comparing that to other things, reason wears them down like it does anyone else. In effect, you end up getting them to agree with some otherwise unthinkable positions, just one plateau at a time. There's only so much erosion that can take place before they fall back to their own lines of thought termination (like "all I care about is immigration", or whatever). So you end up with a kind of "anchor" that we can both agree on (ex: corporations are fucking us), which still has the hard edge of politics. At that point, all it takes is for the politics to do enough that the hard edges start to erode. But, there's no accounting for that. Just gotta assume the people who are doing wrong will keep proving it (as they historically have been unable to avoid, no matter how hard they try or how long they are successful at it prior). As you say: life is complicated. I know people will roll their eyes at this answer as much as any other response I could give you. And I know that a political-focused answer isn't directly analogous to many other situations. But, my answer is as simple as I can think to make it. Just meet people where they're meeting you and don't worry about forcing a point.
      - mapontosevenths 8mo ago
        > But, there's no accounting for that. Just gotta assume the people who are doing wrong will keep proving it (as they historically have been unable to avoid, no matter how hard they try or how long they are successful at it prior). “Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.” ― William Hartnell, Doctor Who
      - vacuity 8mo ago
gipp 8mo ago
Something I've certainly witnessed on this site in particular more than once
behindsight 8mo ago
On a similar vein is the "argument from fallacy" aka fallacist's fallacy. [1] Essentially if you dismiss someone's argument as false just because it may have had a fallacy within it, that reasoning is itself a fallacy. Some fallacy-seeking people ironically ignore this and just dismiss anything when they have the "gotcha, you made a fallacy therefore everything you said can be concluded as false" moment. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
- mapontosevenths 8mo ago
  You know, I hadn't even been aware that this was a term until now but I've certainly seen it in the wild many times! Thanks for sharing! The idea that a single fallacy in a complex chain of reasoning renders the entire chain invalid just makes sense to programmers, who spend most of their time thinking in a step-wise and linear fashion where each output is the input to something else. This sort of "programmer style" thinking has crept into some surprising parts of society these days. In real life, things are often more nuanced.
kgwxd 8mo ago
If someone invokes TTC against a TTC honestly, they're asking the speaker to think about what they just said. The opposite of a terminating thought. If that same person just wants someone to shut up, they'll say "shut up".
- some_random 8mo ago
  Part of the trouble is that some people using cliches are like the poster elsewhere in the thread talking about the super bowl, they're just trying to shut down the conversation and maybe bait a funny reaction.
xve 8mo ago
Unfortunately, almost any phrase can become a thought terminating cliche, the phases in the Wikipedia page are just the easiest ones to spot. Counterintuitivly, I've heard people say things like "let's just think about this", "how about we take a step back", "let's pause and come back to this", etc. as a thought terminating cliches. This leads me to conclude there's something more going on here. On the surface these types of statements imply reflection, carefull consideration or a call for thoughtfulness but somehow the way they get used does the opposite. Maybe it's the tone, or maybe it's the intent of the speaker. Maybe it's when someone just wants to end the conversation they use whatever phrase is necessary to just end it, while preserving some degree of plausible deniability (not wanting to reveal that they simply want to end the conversation). The opposite might be true as well, maybe the example you used can be a way to start a conversation and not end one.

dfxm12 8mo ago

The 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 8mo ago
hard 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 8mo ago
  I 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.
  - catapart 8mo ago
    Personally, I just go for "plateaus of understanding". As a filthy socialist in a deep red area, I never had a chance at convincing people all in one go. So I give them just enough that they'll come back around for another bite at convincing me why I'm wrong. Where I'm from, that mostly looks like waiting on the news cycle to say something bad about a democrat and then letting them bring it up purely to dunk on me, rather than to actually engage with the conversation. So I take the opportunity to redirect the dunk. "Oh, that IS bad. Wow, they really fucked up. Isn't this like how So and So did something similar?" Now they are explaining to me the nuances of difference between the situations. That's what they'll remember later - the arguments THEY made. And when they start comparing that to other things, reason wears them down like it does anyone else. In effect, you end up getting them to agree with some otherwise unthinkable positions, just one plateau at a time. There's only so much erosion that can take place before they fall back to their own lines of thought termination (like "all I care about is immigration", or whatever). So you end up with a kind of "anchor" that we can both agree on (ex: corporations are fucking us), which still has the hard edge of politics. At that point, all it takes is for the politics to do enough that the hard edges start to erode. But, there's no accounting for that. Just gotta assume the people who are doing wrong will keep proving it (as they historically have been unable to avoid, no matter how hard they try or how long they are successful at it prior). As you say: life is complicated. I know people will roll their eyes at this answer as much as any other response I could give you. And I know that a political-focused answer isn't directly analogous to many other situations. But, my answer is as simple as I can think to make it. Just meet people where they're meeting you and don't worry about forcing a point.
    - mapontosevenths 8mo ago
      > But, there's no accounting for that. Just gotta assume the people who are doing wrong will keep proving it (as they historically have been unable to avoid, no matter how hard they try or how long they are successful at it prior). “Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.” ― William Hartnell, Doctor Who
    - vacuity 8mo ago

gipp 8mo ago

Something I've certainly witnessed on this site in particular more than once

behindsight 8mo ago

On a similar vein is the "argument from fallacy" aka fallacist's fallacy. [1] Essentially if you dismiss someone's argument as false just because it may have had a fallacy within it, that reasoning is itself a fallacy. Some fallacy-seeking people ironically ignore this and just dismiss anything when they have the "gotcha, you made a fallacy therefore everything you said can be concluded as false" moment. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

mapontosevenths 8mo ago
You know, I hadn't even been aware that this was a term until now but I've certainly seen it in the wild many times! Thanks for sharing! The idea that a single fallacy in a complex chain of reasoning renders the entire chain invalid just makes sense to programmers, who spend most of their time thinking in a step-wise and linear fashion where each output is the input to something else. This sort of "programmer style" thinking has crept into some surprising parts of society these days. In real life, things are often more nuanced.

kgwxd 8mo ago

If someone invokes TTC against a TTC honestly, they're asking the speaker to think about what they just said. The opposite of a terminating thought. If that same person just wants someone to shut up, they'll say "shut up".

some_random 8mo ago
Part of the trouble is that some people using cliches are like the poster elsewhere in the thread talking about the super bowl, they're just trying to shut down the conversation and maybe bait a funny reaction.

xve 8mo ago

Unfortunately, almost any phrase can become a thought terminating cliche, the phases in the Wikipedia page are just the easiest ones to spot. Counterintuitivly, I've heard people say things like "let's just think about this", "how about we take a step back", "let's pause and come back to this", etc. as a thought terminating cliches. This leads me to conclude there's something more going on here. On the surface these types of statements imply reflection, carefull consideration or a call for thoughtfulness but somehow the way they get used does the opposite. Maybe it's the tone, or maybe it's the intent of the speaker. Maybe it's when someone just wants to end the conversation they use whatever phrase is necessary to just end it, while preserving some degree of plausible deniability (not wanting to reveal that they simply want to end the conversation). The opposite might be true as well, maybe the example you used can be a way to start a conversation and not end one.