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_cliché)
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.
The Wikipedia article has multiple conflicting definitions, including:
"any use of the language, especially repeated phrases, to ward off forbidden thoughts”
“Claim Y sounds catchy. Therefore, claim Y is true.”
“the start and finish of any ideological analysis”
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.
Well, if you recognize that a situation is beyond your scope you might use such a phrase to suggest moving on from further discussion either internally or in conversation with others. It might be less a magic phrase that stops thoughts and more a request to move on; a “conversation terminating” phrase.
Thank you! I felt the same way.
I find myself saying or thinking “it is what it is” pretty often, but not to terminate thought/conversation. If something bad happens and I can’t do anything about it except deal with it, that’s just the way it is. I see people complaining about those situations, and I feel like it’s just wasted energy; we should save that energy for the things we have some amount of control over.
The second one seems to be a bit of an Americanism I’m not really sure what it means. I take it to mean there’s nothing anyone can do about it, e.g. there is a storm coming and you are not sure if it will hit your house or not, whereas the first one means there’s nothing we can do about it but some other human can e.g. above your pay grade/ out of your responsibility.
Just walking away from someone who you’re talking to is generally seen as very rude, hence us developing social cues to demonstrate that you’re done with the topic/conversation.
