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Critical thinking is about using your brain in the same way that a woodworking course teaches you about how to use a chisel and a metalworking course will teach you how to use a file. Not knowing how to properly use the tools you have been given is a waste of time, effort and energy and not just your own and it leads to sloppy products.

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The point is not that critical thinking is a useful tool, I agree here. The title is about being a necessary skill. Here I disagree, many people can learn the craft by accumulating a lot of experience. Is like machine learning, you only need to have a lot of data (experience). Human are good at learning by example. Creative people are necessary for our culture to progress, but is not something necessary. You can live your life doing a good job and contributing to the welfare of society without critical thinking. Many times the good ideas come from nowhere inside us. Many great mathematicians create ideas from insight not by reflexive critical thinking.

So would I be correct in characterizing your point as "critical thinking is one of several ways one can be successful"

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