The need for domain knowledge

Critical thinking is nothing more than asking questions to yourself and to others based on prior knowledge. It is the gateway between rejection and adoption of a new idea.

For this reason, critical thinking is domain specific as the domain has taught you which questions to ask and how.

So, if you can critically assess a poem, you are not automatically able to critically approach a math problem. Although the method might be the same, asking questions, you need domain specific knowledge (i.e. a basic understanding of the domain) to be truly critical.

As Generative AI causes cognitive offloading, it threatens critical thinking. We become unable to approach ideas critically, trusting the synthetic output of an algorithm because we ourselves lack domain specific knowledge.

This is also applicable to creative thinking. The more you know, the more connections you can make between ideas, within a domain and outside. The more you outsource to AI, the less creative you become.