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.
> 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.