this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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The reason I decided to reply was this:
Here you're treating thought-terminating clicheness as a quality inherent to the phrase "it's just a tool", not to the subjective motivations of the people using the phrase in a thought-terminating capacity.
I think, especially in discussions where strong opinions abound and form cliques, labeling certain phrases as "thought-terminating cliches" is itself a form of permission to forego any critical engagement with an argument. Or, to put it another way, to use a cliche to terminate thought. I think it's worth my time and effort to say, essentially, "hold on, I don't think we should immediately dismiss anyone who tries to distinguish the tools from the tool users, that line of thought has some important and useful ramifications for this conversation."