It would seem one of the folk lacking critical thinking is the supposed expert, who ironically can’t look at the subject from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know it well.

I would submit that we probably don’t know what the hell we’re doing in this regard, and might perhaps want to rethink the approaches we take in these matters. Raw problem-solving intelligence has a range of expression; a person can be an absolute genius at abstract spatial relationships, and solving puzzles–While simultaneously being a complete idiot when it comes to dealing with other people.

Some of this stuff is learnable, but… Dear God, the stuff that isn’t just cannot be taught to some people. I had a couple of guys working for me over the years I was in the Army who were exquisitely intelligent and able to score incredibly high on the tests, yet who were utter fools when it came to managing other people. They would do stuff that would just boggle the mind, and when they got called on it, or it blew up in their faces, I would have to walk them through what they’d done, step-by-bloody-step. And, they wouldn’t get it, continuing to repeat the whole sorry sequence of errors repetitively, no matter what I tried to do to counter this flaw in their personalities. Root cause? Utter lack of empathy for others, and an inability to process how their actions and behavior would be interpreted by others.

Likewise, I had guys who were brilliant at management and leadership, yet dumb as posts when it came to doing anything else, like solve problems on the ground or try to do semi-complex admin work.

I’m convinced that we have a very poor definition of just what constitutes intelligence, and what we test for is an inadequate simulacrum for the skills and capabilities we need. The whole thing is a very poorly understood, and entirely nebulous concept, one which stands out in my mind the way obscenity did for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart–”I know it when I see it…”.

And, I’ve seen an awful lot of people who scored very high on traditional IQ tests, yet who were dumb as posts about just about everything other than that narrow range of subjects.

Critical thinking is precisely the same; it’s poorly defined, badly taught in most cases, and again, it’s something that fits that dictum of Stewart’s…

Maybe he didn’t think it was important, or maybe he was far too intelligent in other areas to remember what the hell he had done with the check.

Probably I am just not looking at it from multiple perspectives.

But then I’m no good at it myself.