How does critical thinking affect you as a reader and writer How can thinking critically improve your writing?

Critical Thinking is such a vast, complex subject because it is very broad in scope, as to everything it entails. Critical thinking can best be summed up as, "consider the source!"

When you see a commercial on TV, when your parents set rules, when your friends are asking you to do something, when a politician is trying to bag your vote, when you hear a story from a disadvantaged person, when you hear a sermon in a church, when you are taught various subjects in school, and any other way that you take in information: WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION, WHAT IS THE RATIONALIZATION, OR WHAT IS THE ACCURACY AND BELIEVABILITY OF THE INFORMATION THAT IS BEING PRESENTED TO YOU?

Critical thinkers scrutinize information that they are given, and then make intelligent determinations about the information at hand whether he or she should act in any way; whether it's to believe in a certain view point, buy a certain product, or plain just say no.

Juries have to employ the skill of critical thinking when determining guilt of a person charged with a crime (or so we hope). In some extreme cases, witnesses will lie, police might violate a defendant's rights, some evidence will not be "beyond a reasonable doubt", and so on.

Critical thinking requires a lot of knowledge, and then making an informed decision in a given matter, wherein if you act without a certain tidbit of knowledge or consideration, you could loose money, property, friends, or even risk harm to yourself.