It's amazing that the academic departments that talk up their critical thinking in the most produce nothing that resembles a workable theory of the world.
Maybe what you wrote was true at one time, but these days, "evaluating ideas...for flaws" in large parts of academia is the process of finding logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and make them say the opposite of what they say. It's essentially formalized trolling.
That mode of thought has no business getting into the same building as real engineering.
Critical Theory is about the opposite of critical thinking.
> ...but these days, "evaluating ideas...for flaws" is the process of finding logical contortions that, in the death-of-the-author spirit, twist texts and make them say the opposite of what they say.
Wow.
It also tells me we are utterly talking past one another here. I have better things to do with my afternoon than refute yet more straw-men.