Basically, the human brain rarely considers its list of options with deep thought (they believe they do, but in reality, they don’t), and then prefer to their most familiar one, or the one that springs to their head firstly, which might be because human physical communication requires quick answers.
It’s probably important to debate arguments opposing what the self believes for a more complete picture, too.
Can also do that on other people, don’t attach emotions to them though, and keep in mind you don’t know their minds, but still, depending on experience, try to make ACCURATE assumptions…
Eg, It is true many don’t have jobs, and the economy indeed sucks, but it isn’t necessarily true that the economy sucking directly causes job loss (as a lot of people still work).
Critical thinking is not one-sided!! Otherwise, if you force it, it’s just coercion… Though it is indeed hard/risky to oppose the self, or friends, or family, or authority figures.
The simplest version when someone asks what it is… is… “THINK FROM BOTH SIDES!”
Critical thinking involves balanced perspectives; one-sided arguments are inherently and by definition totally biased compared to two-sided arguments, so, likely, they cannot decide accurately between two actions.
However, inherently, I think it's fine to have heuristics for things that you don't actually need to think about so deeply, as there are indeed quite a lot of things that fulfil this criterion.
A common phrase nowadays. The death of thoughts. That phrase implicitly devalues critical thinking, and the loss of this can cause the shortening of attention spans and the hatred of people who can think deeply. Even though I think that it is entirely justified and actually a good trait. Another one is where in the education system, teachers tell students to keep quiet, even when they have a valid reason.
It's related to the basic laws of socialization: deep things take energy to process. So only if the listener actually wants it will they be willing to do it. Otherwise they may leave. Afterwards it is very confusing whose fault it is - but I wouldn't blame anyone in the end because no single person can consistently predict another person's response to being spoken to about deep topics.
Is it the bias of
rumination? And fear of
negative emotional responses?
Yes, in fact, most humans get cognitively uncomfortable when they are
asked to think about deep topics like the meaning of life, as it is
not commonly done in day-to-day interactions; plus, even if they do
understand themselves, it’s hard to explain to others, so such ideas are
often rejected by ordinary people.
So the idea of keeping ideas simple is to prioritize comfort over
understanding, which indeed has its own benefits and drawbacks…
Can plan for the worst-case scenario
Can perceive risk-reward and whether to do something in the first
place.
Can improve efficiency and outcome in doing tasks.
…
There’s indeed a lot. Some people dwell on their thoughts for way too
long, though, so action can also help out in that case.
Paradox of critical thinking: too much may make one completely indecisive due to too many decision-making criteria (the opposite of black-and-white thinking- eternal greys)
So much "certainly binary" "have to" generic advice does not account for other circumstances because they want to feel confident, but reality is more complex!!
Here I let you look at an alternative viewpoint, unlike the conformist who mindlessly repeats everything said by an AI model or YouTuber without processing it.
Inversion principle, Reductio ad absurdum, First-principles thinking, and more, they can be used. The more you know, the better you think(when you decide to do it critically, of course).