One marker of a distinguished thinker is that of self-reliant epistemology. What I mean by this is the principle of taking claims seriously, but not literally. You’re treating something someone says with respect but not necessarily fully trusting the claim. This enables a bunch of behavior that results in higher-orders of knowledge.
One example of this comes from Joe Hudson, the head of Art of Accomplishment.
There was no way any teacher could do right by me. So I would read some of them and I go my brain was in a debate with everything that they said. And eventually I heard enough teachers say, don't trust me try it out for yourself. Test it.
One advantage of this mindset is that it cultivates a vacuum of action that you otherwise would not take. If, at a deep level, you feel that your sensemaking is more trustworthy than others, you will take action that aligns with that. Not only does this result in a bunch of downstream behavior that is to your advantage, but it also builds up self-confidence which also enables all types of other helpful stuff.
Another advantage is specific knowledge. By simply doing more rather than inputting more, you are gaining a specific advantage over others by getting your hands dirty and gaining real tacit knowledge.
Tacit knowledge, as it turns out, is related to understanding. As you build tacit knowledge, this forms into a ball of understanding through movement of informational nodes. This understanding would otherwise not come from from just reading opinions and trusting them. Understanding seems to be in deficit these days due to LLMs and laziness.
So, to summarize: treat others with respect and do not dismiss them, but do not trust them. Not from a place of malice, but from a place of genuine wonder and curiosity. Get your hands dirty, run experiments, think through the thing using your own brain, and come up with a conclusion. Then run that loop again if you think the conclusion is inadequate in relation to the problem-space. You can even apply this to your self through metacognition by assessing your own distortions.