An article about defiance to crash test (or test) anything.
What is critical thinking? Critical thinking allows a person to acquire and clarify goals, examine and discover possibilities, discern hidden values, evaluate evidence, facts and knowledge; also critical thinking lets one accomplish actions and constantly assess & revise conclusions.
The process of thinking critically also avoids any kind of ultimately negative or positive conclusions about subjects.
"Critical" describing this very thinking means anything but negative; critical in this very instance means "measuring", "valuating", "assessing", as in thinking that examines & evaulates whether e.g. extraterrestrial civilisations exist or not; it does not say whether they exist or not, instead, it asks what evidence we have FOR and AGAINST their existence (in this example) and what this knowledge is all for.
In fact, it does have nothing to do with rationalism either, since rationalism takes that the reason is the main force behind acquiring any valuable knowledge, while critical thinking turns to the reality & perception itself and bases its assessment directly on the data at hand and close, constant (practical) examination.
Also, conclusions are open-ended, however, the way in which they will be expanded or removed will be based on already done work and they must be limited enough to allow space for action and accomplishment of specified goals.
These goals can be more of spiritual ones, such as simple understanding and empathy. Others may be contained only to physical actions and activities or combine both (spiritual and physical) of them.
And yes, the critical thinking can be applied to a deal of things, including critical thinking itself, too. In critical thinking, rather nothing is definite maybe except actions themselves - and even they can be corrected (/pardoned) later on.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable.
- George Bernard Shaw