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"Thought-Terminating Cliches"
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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This term seems like just an insult wearing academic robes. And a tautology. All cliches over simplify the world, side-stepping complex analysis.
There's nothing "thought terminating" about acknowledging that a problem is beyond your scope - which is what the first two mean. I've only heard YOLO used to encourage risk-taking, which is completely different.
Realistically, these are often just social cues that you're bored with the conversation.
Obviously whether you use a cliche to avoid thinking deeper on a topic or for some other reason changes with each use. It's not inherent to the phrase.
I don't think either of these are really thought terminating cliches inherently. The phrase is more for their usage as a rhetorical device to end arguments in certain ways. They become them when they are "used to intentionally dismiss dissent or justify fallacious logic" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9)
Ending an argument often involves dismissing dissent. The end of an argument is also the end of thought on that argument. You’re just rewording the original term, that you’re arguing against.
It ends the argument it doesn't complete the argument.
You've essentially just stopped talking about the topic. No consensus has been arrived at. Possibly because one was not possible.
Yes, exactly what the screenshot says.
It's not productive to argue endlessly.
I disagree.
Source?
I was just joking about arguing endlessly, by carrying on an argument.
No you weren't.
Yeah they were.
No I wasnt
Source?
Source: them's be they, tho
*though
Your argument is in shambles.
The Wikipedia article has multiple conflicting definitions, including:
The problem is that the term is just BS, in part because the idea it was made to support is complete BS.
Defining 'Totalitarianism' was a cold war project of western academia, trying to come up with a way to say that the nazis and soviets were the same. They weren't though. Only far right US Nationalists still claim this. The term has very low analytical use, so once the pressure to create this propaganda evaporated with the end of the USSR the term quickly became defunct.
Thought terminating cliches was coined by a psychologist in ’61 trying to claim that 'totalist thought is characterized by thought terminating cliches.' To translate: the west has reasoned ideology, everyone else just spouts cliches.