I'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.
"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.
That's a beautifully written quote, and describes to a T the number one issue plaguing mainstream online discourse today.
It's extremely prevalent on Reddit and similar social media sites (even here, although to a much smaller extent). I have no idea why so many people seem to enjoy this style of speaking, and to be surrounded by others doing the same. Isn't being proven wrong or learning something completely unexpected the best part of the internet?
People like to be surrounded by people like themselves, so there's a group mentality thing going on. A group seeks to maintain itself. Encountering yourself in the other is hard to do online. And on this subject of polarity it's always the other side that is wrong and needs to change! :-)
Being proven wrong and learning something actually hurts. It doesn't harm me when I learn that I'm wrong (just the opposite, it helps me grow) but it very much does hurt! So it makes sense that I tend to avoid things that will hurt me. For some even thinking that they could change and learn leads them to worry and avoidance.
Putting the two together if an individual changes then it weakens their group identity. So a person wants to stay in the group and be safe and not be hurt and the group wants the person to not weaken their membership.
In international peace negotiations a good neutral negotiator seeks to build a common ground between the sides - to show that their groups hold things in common, that change is possible.
On that topic: "No pain no gain." Its a cliche but I dont think thats terminating? "you're not the same person you were five years ago", "change happens", "You don’t have to have it all figured out"
Maybe terminating ones would be "if you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen", "curiosity killed the cat", "Why overthink it?", "That’s above my pay grade", "You can’t teach an old dog new tricks", "leopards cant change their spots"
> 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.
I think you're confusing thought terminating cliches with foundational beliefs, legal arguments, religion, and uhhh, the founding document of the country?
It'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).
Look do you think the claim "human life has value" (choosing something uncontroversial that's likely to be a shared foundational belief, feel free to choose something different if you disagree) is a thought terminating cliche? At some point in discourse you will eventually run into foundational beliefs and while they may functionally be terminating thought I think they have to be a different category because they are foundational. It's a first principles thing.
> "human life has value" (choosing something uncontroversial that's likely to be a shared foundational belief
You've chosen to charge straight into the minefield there: that's possibly the most controversial thing you could say, it has all sorts of implications in all sorts of contexts as diverse as abortion and Palestine.
This is fair. You can't really have a good debate with anyone if you don't agree on first principles. It think that's part of the problem with the worlds polarization these days.
We have this fundamental disconnect between 'the greatest good for the most people' on one side and 'the greatest good for MY people' on the other. It's literally two different answer to the question of life having value. IE - "They all have the same value." vs "Some are more valuable than others."
When you have disagreements that fundamental you will never find common ground. The zero-sum view of the universe is fundamentally incompatible with the other view.
The only way to stop it from becoming a thought terminating cliche when it comes up (in it's many forms) is to explicitly call it out as what it is - A fundamental an insolvable disagreement that can only be met with some level of compromise.
Maybe? I mean, if I believe that all lives have value, and I'm talking to someone who believes that their peoples' lives are more valuable, then I can go further back. Why do any lives have any value? What's your basis for saying that any life has value? All right, starting from there, can you keep that without also extending it to those who are not part of your group?
Note well that this may not work to persuade them. But you can at least have the conversation.
> Note well that this may not work to persuade them. But you can at least have the conversation.
It is noble to try. I suspect that you will always fail, unless the other person is uncommonly reasonable. Those views of life are the result of having vastly different experiences and backgrounds, and aren't something that typically changes after reaching adulthood.
Do American right-wingers think "human life has value"? Why are they ok with people starving to death, or dying of preventable disease? Is human life valuable when they're an AIDS patient? Is it valuable when it's a child being killed in a mass shooting?
I'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.
That'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.
No it's not. It's because the meaning of the English word "prove" has changed. It used to mean "test", which could of course have a positive or negative outcome. The modern sense of "successfully demonstrating truth" has caused this phrase to have the opposite of its original meaning.
I 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.
But 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.
You'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.
> There are exceedingly few things we can claim to apply everywhere, and even fewer we can "prove" to each other.
Yes, this is why hard and fast rules don't make sense, and why they should have "generally", "normally", or "mostly" attached to them.
If you have two categories of birds, one with those that fly and one that doesn't, having that second list doesn't make the first stronger. At some point that second list dilutes that first one so much that it doesn't make sense anymore.
If my rule is that "white guys are named Dave" does my building a list of every example of a Dave and non-Dave make my rule stronger? When does the "strong" nature of the rule get watered down sufficiently? Honestly, a list of hundreds of birds tells me that it's a weak rule and that the "birds fly" rule is wrong.
I hated that I heard that phrase for the time as a small child and instantly realized it made no sense. "What do you mean pointing out a counterexample demonstrates the truth of a statement??" It amazes me that adults say it uncritically.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Thank you for your comment. I will try to remember and apply it.
I have a similar concept, which is roughly described as "don't extend your own arm onto the chopping block, but make use of other people doing the same". Don't make presumptions, and you will never be wrong. Don't dig holes for yourself. Be kind, respectful, genuine. Don't throw the first punch, but don't let innocent people get hurt. Find common ground. When they extend out their arm, take their hand and guide them towards truth and goodness.
> 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
A 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.
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.
> 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.
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), 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 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.
> 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?
> 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.
In 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".
They'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
Yeah, 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.
At 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.
Agreed. 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.
My attention is like a freight train. Slow to start, slow to stop, horribly inefficient for small tasks but uniquely economical for heavy long-term loads.
TTCs are one way I can politely indicate I am unwilling to think further on this matter right now. Something else is the main thing.
Beyond conserving attention, I think TTCs help empaths and religious people establish their boundaries of thought.
It's not that thinking deeply is _unsafe_, it's that we can't and/or shouldn't do it at any time for anyone that asks.
The 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.
>> 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".
And "I don't want to" often means "I don't want to make the effort, but I would like the outcome if I did."
I think it really means "I would like to, but the cost is too high." IE - They like the idea of the reward, but the "expense" in terms of opportunity cost is too high.
They just don't think it through to the end when they say it. Or maybe they do, and this is just an easier way to say it?
Describing 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.
As 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.
I 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).
It 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.
Come on, eg "it is what it is" is basically stoic philosophy in a nutshell. That's not a cope, it's a useful way of separating what you can control from what you can't. If the still-closeted overthinkers in this thread want to call that a "Thought-Terminating Cliché" then fine by me but to suggest that none of these can be useful tools is ridiculous.
The article suggests that "further discussion" is always good and my argument is that, well actually, no it isn't. Not always. And especially not when the entire discussion takes place inside of one person's brain.
There's an idea that I agree with there, but I think that the low resolution of the phrase holds within it ambiguity which is conflating different intents and different effects across different contexts: I see "we shouldn't try to control it" as quite different from "it can't be changed", and the use to oneself of such a phrase is much different from using it in response to the concerns of others. I'd suggest that the article is using this phrase as an example for some cases with a particular set of possible intents, which doesn't preclude all possible uses, nor that they might be 'non-negative', as you're suggesting here. Similar cases can be made for some of the other examples; this shows that they're not absolutes, but it doesn't show that they can't be used in a context where their effect is less a healthy affirmation on the limits of responsibility and effort, and more of an unconsidered dismissal of responsibility outright—and I don't even see that the article paints the essential dismissal of the concept as inherently negative, only that dismissal is occurring. I can clearly see it being legible with a negative tone, though, particularly given some of the examples.
I wouldn't say the article suggests that there should always be further discussion, either, only that these phrases tend to shut it down. I don't see such evaluative statements around the examples of that term at all. Does it seem like I'm missing something?
I'm so enamored with similar concepts, I like to think about them as tools that I might reach out to, and they help me in achieve whatever, say thinking clearly and correctly.
Iirc when I've first seen someone linking this wiki article on HN I got so angry at it (both the person and the wiki article) that I wrote a ~15-sentence rant how stupid I found it.
This is definitely a tool that I would never use and only get angry when I see it. IMO it's no good.
I 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.
Ah! That's interesting! I've never actually had that be difficult at all. Every time I ask "I'm just trying to get X. Is that something you can speak to?", I get a pretty concise answer, even if the response itself is meandering and non-committal (that's a "no", if you're unclear).
Would you have an example of a discussion where you weren't able to determine if both people were working towards the same goal?
Well, 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.
Parent 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.
I'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.
Yeah 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.
That’s another one that’s true but particularly irritating when used as a cheap shot. I have responses for that like “Is it good when it breaks? Who owns it when it does?” Sort of like “are you fast if you don’t finish? Are you finished if you have to do things over?”
> I'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.
No, because it's very common here for people use lack of perfection as an excuse for inaction, specifically to shut down thoughtful discussion of a problem or solutions to it
I disagree. It seems there is nothing HN likes more than claiming a single tiny mistake, or difference of preference, or possible hang up that will certainly come out in the wash are all valid reasons to reject anything and everything.
Programmers especially need to be constantly reminded that perfect is the enemy of the good, as do people trying to run successful businesses.
I'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.
Don't overthink it.
Pointing out thought terminating cliches is a thought terminating cliche?
They're joking, "don't overthink it" is an example on the Wikipedia page.
It's all good.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.
Sometimes 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"
Yeah they work great for terminating thoughts, that's the whole point.
In this case the (communication) termination is working as intended
>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.
A 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.
That would work, but it has the problem of not terminating quickly enough. You see, the halftime superbowl show is on
Eh, it is what it is.
I don't get the joke ...
Robert Jay Lifton coined the term in his book which was about brainwashing and totalist societies
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.
That's a beautifully written quote, and describes to a T the number one issue plaguing mainstream online discourse today.
It's extremely prevalent on Reddit and similar social media sites (even here, although to a much smaller extent). I have no idea why so many people seem to enjoy this style of speaking, and to be surrounded by others doing the same. Isn't being proven wrong or learning something completely unexpected the best part of the internet?
People like to be surrounded by people like themselves, so there's a group mentality thing going on. A group seeks to maintain itself. Encountering yourself in the other is hard to do online. And on this subject of polarity it's always the other side that is wrong and needs to change! :-)
Being proven wrong and learning something actually hurts. It doesn't harm me when I learn that I'm wrong (just the opposite, it helps me grow) but it very much does hurt! So it makes sense that I tend to avoid things that will hurt me. For some even thinking that they could change and learn leads them to worry and avoidance.
Putting the two together if an individual changes then it weakens their group identity. So a person wants to stay in the group and be safe and not be hurt and the group wants the person to not weaken their membership.
In international peace negotiations a good neutral negotiator seeks to build a common ground between the sides - to show that their groups hold things in common, that change is possible.
On that topic: "No pain no gain." Its a cliche but I dont think thats terminating? "you're not the same person you were five years ago", "change happens", "You don’t have to have it all figured out"
Maybe terminating ones would be "if you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen", "curiosity killed the cat", "Why overthink it?", "That’s above my pay grade", "You can’t teach an old dog new tricks", "leopards cant change their spots"
> 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.
I think you're confusing thought terminating cliches with foundational beliefs, legal arguments, religion, and uhhh, the founding document of the country?
It'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).
Look do you think the claim "human life has value" (choosing something uncontroversial that's likely to be a shared foundational belief, feel free to choose something different if you disagree) is a thought terminating cliche? At some point in discourse you will eventually run into foundational beliefs and while they may functionally be terminating thought I think they have to be a different category because they are foundational. It's a first principles thing.
> "human life has value" (choosing something uncontroversial that's likely to be a shared foundational belief
You've chosen to charge straight into the minefield there: that's possibly the most controversial thing you could say, it has all sorts of implications in all sorts of contexts as diverse as abortion and Palestine.
> It's a first principles thing.
This is fair. You can't really have a good debate with anyone if you don't agree on first principles. It think that's part of the problem with the worlds polarization these days.
We have this fundamental disconnect between 'the greatest good for the most people' on one side and 'the greatest good for MY people' on the other. It's literally two different answer to the question of life having value. IE - "They all have the same value." vs "Some are more valuable than others."
When you have disagreements that fundamental you will never find common ground. The zero-sum view of the universe is fundamentally incompatible with the other view.
The only way to stop it from becoming a thought terminating cliche when it comes up (in it's many forms) is to explicitly call it out as what it is - A fundamental an insolvable disagreement that can only be met with some level of compromise.
Maybe? I mean, if I believe that all lives have value, and I'm talking to someone who believes that their peoples' lives are more valuable, then I can go further back. Why do any lives have any value? What's your basis for saying that any life has value? All right, starting from there, can you keep that without also extending it to those who are not part of your group?
Note well that this may not work to persuade them. But you can at least have the conversation.
> Note well that this may not work to persuade them. But you can at least have the conversation.
It is noble to try. I suspect that you will always fail, unless the other person is uncommonly reasonable. Those views of life are the result of having vastly different experiences and backgrounds, and aren't something that typically changes after reaching adulthood.
Do American right-wingers think "human life has value"? Why are they ok with people starving to death, or dying of preventable disease? Is human life valuable when they're an AIDS patient? Is it valuable when it's a child being killed in a mass shooting?
In Dutch we call this a "dooddoener", a "death-do'er". Quite a good word.
I'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.
That'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.
No it's not. It's because the meaning of the English word "prove" has changed. It used to mean "test", which could of course have a positive or negative outcome. The modern sense of "successfully demonstrating truth" has caused this phrase to have the opposite of its original meaning.
[0] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/prove_v?tl=true
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating".
I 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.
But 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.
You'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
> There are exceedingly few things we can claim to apply everywhere, and even fewer we can "prove" to each other.
Yes, this is why hard and fast rules don't make sense, and why they should have "generally", "normally", or "mostly" attached to them.
If you have two categories of birds, one with those that fly and one that doesn't, having that second list doesn't make the first stronger. At some point that second list dilutes that first one so much that it doesn't make sense anymore.
If my rule is that "white guys are named Dave" does my building a list of every example of a Dave and non-Dave make my rule stronger? When does the "strong" nature of the rule get watered down sufficiently? Honestly, a list of hundreds of birds tells me that it's a weak rule and that the "birds fly" rule is wrong.
I hated that I heard that phrase for the time as a small child and instantly realized it made no sense. "What do you mean pointing out a counterexample demonstrates the truth of a statement??" It amazes me that adults say it uncritically.
It is what it is.
Agree to disagree
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.
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
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.
Something I've certainly witnessed on this site in particular more than once
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for your comment. I will try to remember and apply it.
I have a similar concept, which is roughly described as "don't extend your own arm onto the chopping block, but make use of other people doing the same". Don't make presumptions, and you will never be wrong. Don't dig holes for yourself. Be kind, respectful, genuine. Don't throw the first punch, but don't let innocent people get hurt. Find common ground. When they extend out their arm, take their hand and guide them towards truth and goodness.
> 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
A 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.
> A rising tide lifts all boats
Indeed. Of course if you don’t have enough money for a boat: You drown.
And probably used even more to justify 'capitalism at all costs'
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.
> 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.
Now used to justify Trump's withdrawal from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Paris Agreement.
The examples in the article are pretty poor:
> 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), 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 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.
Or "you can't cross a canyon in two jumps", which was used to justify fast, radical economic change in the post-revolutionary USSR.
“All models are wrong, some are useful” is frequently misused or misunderstood this way.
A stop sequence, but for humans.
> 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?
The 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.
So a cliché is thought-terminating when it is intentionally used to dissent?
You missed the “only”. The article states having one of the three as a necessary condition, not as a sufficient one.
But the intention to dissent can be what makes a cliché thought-terminating?
In 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".
They'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
Yeah, 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.
At 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.
Then 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”
Right, that is the same thing as "Let's agree to disagree.", which is an example in this article.
Agreed. 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.
>a barrier against thinking too deeply
Can you explain what the risks of “thinking too deeply” are that a barrier to such is beneficial
My attention is like a freight train. Slow to start, slow to stop, horribly inefficient for small tasks but uniquely economical for heavy long-term loads.
TTCs are one way I can politely indicate I am unwilling to think further on this matter right now. Something else is the main thing.
Beyond conserving attention, I think TTCs help empaths and religious people establish their boundaries of thought.
It's not that thinking deeply is _unsafe_, it's that we can't and/or shouldn't do it at any time for anyone that asks.
Thanks for the response
Mother 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
The 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.
>> 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".
And "I don't want to" often means "I don't want to make the effort, but I would like the outcome if I did."
I think it really means "I would like to, but the cost is too high." IE - They like the idea of the reward, but the "expense" in terms of opportunity cost is too high.
They just don't think it through to the end when they say it. Or maybe they do, and this is just an easier way to say it?
Describing 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.
What youre describing is important enough that it surely also has a name, but its not what thought-terminating cliches are.
Those fall into the category of defeatism, perhaps?
As 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.
I 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."
I 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).
It 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.
Come on, eg "it is what it is" is basically stoic philosophy in a nutshell. That's not a cope, it's a useful way of separating what you can control from what you can't. If the still-closeted overthinkers in this thread want to call that a "Thought-Terminating Cliché" then fine by me but to suggest that none of these can be useful tools is ridiculous.
The article suggests that "further discussion" is always good and my argument is that, well actually, no it isn't. Not always. And especially not when the entire discussion takes place inside of one person's brain.
There's an idea that I agree with there, but I think that the low resolution of the phrase holds within it ambiguity which is conflating different intents and different effects across different contexts: I see "we shouldn't try to control it" as quite different from "it can't be changed", and the use to oneself of such a phrase is much different from using it in response to the concerns of others. I'd suggest that the article is using this phrase as an example for some cases with a particular set of possible intents, which doesn't preclude all possible uses, nor that they might be 'non-negative', as you're suggesting here. Similar cases can be made for some of the other examples; this shows that they're not absolutes, but it doesn't show that they can't be used in a context where their effect is less a healthy affirmation on the limits of responsibility and effort, and more of an unconsidered dismissal of responsibility outright—and I don't even see that the article paints the essential dismissal of the concept as inherently negative, only that dismissal is occurring. I can clearly see it being legible with a negative tone, though, particularly given some of the examples.
I wouldn't say the article suggests that there should always be further discussion, either, only that these phrases tend to shut it down. I don't see such evaluative statements around the examples of that term at all. Does it seem like I'm missing something?
>> and the use to oneself of such a phrase is much different from using it in response to the concerns of others
Quite right.
I'm so enamored with similar concepts, I like to think about them as tools that I might reach out to, and they help me in achieve whatever, say thinking clearly and correctly.
Iirc when I've first seen someone linking this wiki article on HN I got so angry at it (both the person and the wiki article) that I wrote a ~15-sentence rant how stupid I found it.
This is definitely a tool that I would never use and only get angry when I see it. IMO it's no good.
I’ve yet to meet anyone that had anything worth talking about that has invoked one of these
A thesaurus for gaslighting
I 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.
>The second that stops seeming to be the case, things are better left unresolved and we SHOULD terminate the discussion
Well sometimes agreeing on that is the hard part.
Ah! That's interesting! I've never actually had that be difficult at all. Every time I ask "I'm just trying to get X. Is that something you can speak to?", I get a pretty concise answer, even if the response itself is meandering and non-committal (that's a "no", if you're unclear).
Would you have an example of a discussion where you weren't able to determine if both people were working towards the same goal?
"You don't really want X, you want Y"
> "You clearly care way too much about this topic.": "Oh dang! My bad. How much caring is just right?"
An amount equal to the interlocutor's.
conspiracy theory, anyone? :)
That's a good one.
Are 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.
Well, 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.
Let's agree to disagree
How so?
Parent 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.
I'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.
I use that a lot, but I find it is useful to avoid purity spirals. ( 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.
I'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.
Yeah 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.
I 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.
That’s another one that’s true but particularly irritating when used as a cheap shot. I have responses for that like “Is it good when it breaks? Who owns it when it does?” Sort of like “are you fast if you don’t finish? Are you finished if you have to do things over?”
> I'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.
No, because it's very common here for people use lack of perfection as an excuse for inaction, specifically to shut down thoughtful discussion of a problem or solutions to it
Everything will be ok, man. Everything happens for a reason. Don’t worry.
I disagree. It seems there is nothing HN likes more than claiming a single tiny mistake, or difference of preference, or possible hang up that will certainly come out in the wash are all valid reasons to reject anything and everything.
Programmers especially need to be constantly reminded that perfect is the enemy of the good, as do people trying to run successful businesses.
I instantly terminate friendships where such phrases appear.
I call it 'southern "wisdom"'
Ah sure, lookit
Should the use of cliches be made a criminal offense?
If you want the prisons to be full of American sports commentators.
Sounds good.
There oughta be a law!
We are slowly (re-)discovering the various bits and pieces that make up our system prompt.