[spamizbad]

That meme never registered as problematic to me (at least by meme standards) but you’re correct.

I always felt it outed its creators as lacking theory of mind; why does a large group of people have different shared beliefs than me? They must lack the ability to think independently like everyone else in my cliquey subculture!

[epicureanideal]

But let's acknowledge the truth that there are plenty of people who really don't think critically. Certainly some people will label others as "not thinking critically" when they really just think differently, but let's agree the former category does exist, and it's not a small population.

[spamizbad]

But most people do think critically. Have you considered this phenomenon to simply be shared or group cognition (also something nearly everyone experiences), rather than a lack of critical thinking skills?

[epicureanideal]

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about most people thinking critically. I don't have anything other than personal experience to justify my position and a quick Google search wasn't able to turn up any convincing studies.

Group cognition (from a quick skim of a Wikipedia article about it) doesn't seem to justify lack of individual critical thinking though. It seems to be more like a term to describe a process, like "memes" and "idea viruses". It doesn't substitute for individual critical thinking.