Intelligence means knowing what's wrong

[Richard Masters]

...

In other words, if you can't ever say "This is wrong," then you're not an effective critical thinker.

Seems to me that skeptics should be able to say without reservation that, for example:

* Ancient flat earth theory is wrong.
* Leprechauns don't exist.
* The Nazis intentionally murdered millions of Jews and others.
* 9/11 was not an inside job.

If anyone is interested in discussing this topic, I'll try to find excerpts of the original article to cite, or other linkable references to the research cited in the article.

I've found that eliminating certain assumptions makes decision making a little easier. It may take a day or a month to make up your mind on 9/11, but once you do, and you understand how you arrived at that conclusion, the next conspiracy theory becomes easier to figure out.

If you apply the same skepticism to different ideas, while your friends and family are thinking they saw an alien spacecraft, or that their terminal illness can be willed away by asking the universe ("The Secret" magical thinking), you'll quickly figure out with certainty the former was a compact disk hanging from a tree, and you'll be researching palliative medicine and experimental treatments in the latter case, instead of just hoping for a miracle.

And the mere act of taking a skeptical position doesn't imply faith, because you'll be seeking alternative explanations and basing/building your conclusions on previous research and reasoning. If so far, a friend has recommended 5 or 6 "opportunities" and all have turned out to be MLM scams, you can often expect the 7th to also be a scam. And to really test the hypothesis, you can apply the same reasoning you applied to the other 6 opportunities. You may turn out to be wrong, but you'll be more certain.

Recently I was advised to place tomato on my sunburn to speed up healing and ease the pain. I was skeptical, so instead of just doing it, I looked it up. If they were right, I wanted to know why, because knowing how tomato helps treat sunburns means that I can improve the treatment.

I never found a direct explanation for using tomato to treat sunburns. However I found that vinegar's acidity helps restore the skin's normal Ph levels. Since tomato is slightly more acidic than water, it's plausible that tomato helps. Nevertheless, given the choice between tomato and vinegar, why not go with vinegar, which has higher acidity? Looking for what is wrong with tomato as a treatment for sunburn led to a better solution. Nonetheless, in my research I found out that there are better solutions, like cortisone therapy (especially if there is swelling). So now, while others are rubbing tomato paste on their skin, I'll know there's a better solution, and I'll know why with certainty.

The OP's title and sources imply that critical thinking can translate into intelligence or at the very least, become an equalizer with regards to intelligence.

 

[Piggy]

.
Who had his blind sides in alchemy and religion.

And only a man with such an amazing intellect could have blind spots that big (after all, he wrote more about religion than about science) and still accomplish what he did. It just floors me.

 

[I Ratant]

I talk to Ike all the time.
Showing him how he made the modern world, and what the modern world knows what he didn't.