Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

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.

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?

> 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.

> "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.

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