The mistake is thinking that you can just "think for yourself" without possessing knowledge.
I think people who avoid scams, cults, and pseudoscience largely does it through general knowledge and heuristics, not by thinking hard.
This is clearly a mistake since EVERYONE THINKS FOR THEMSELVES WITHOUT BEING SPOON-FED IT.
A person needs to be socialized enough to develop language. As long as you’re more human-sociable than a chimpanzee-raised jungle child, that base is covered. You don’t need much more beyond that in order to “think”.
> I think people who avoid scams, cults, and pseudoscience largely does it through general knowledge and heuristics, not by thinking hard.
Everyone has built-in heuristics. Why do you think “rationalists” complain about “cognitive biases” so much? We need heuristics to survive. Something which we did prior to Prussian-inspired schooling.