The really hard part of critical thinking is training your intuitive, heuristic filters. Applying rigorous critical thinking to everything takes way too long. Conversely, applying critical thinking to nothing at all makes you a gullible idiot. Developing that filter to strike the right balance is a lifelong learning process.

Sure, but if I could turn the societal dial a few clicks toward critical thinking vs day dreaming, I'd do it.

The unquestionable success of the Scientific Method has shown that careful analysis and requirement of experimental proof far outstrip bumbling about with our own natural human level of random thoughts that we label "creativity".

Creativity and critical thinking aren't opposite ends of the same scale, in many ways they are orthogonal.

Similarly, critical thinking and blind pessimism aren't the same thing, though many people mistake them to be.

The scientific method is about testing ideas.

Generating ideas another matter.

Innovation often requires ideas that sound 'crazy' (because they don't fit with established ideas).

I dunno. Maybe.

But then I look around and see more need for creativity now than ever. Technology is changing faster than ever and that's impacting society in ways previously only speculated about. To me that means there's a lot of opportunity out there waiting to be captured by people crazy enough to do a little dreaming.

Ideas are delicate things.