I'm studying philosophy on my own right now. Realizing that all the idiotic thoughts people have come from bad philosophy, whether implicit or explicit. As a kid I always wondered why adults say such stupid things. I frequently suspected, and now I know, they simply aren't rational and always appeal to some misguided concept of one authority or another.
Discussion
I love Karl Popper's epistemology of Critical Rationalism, because it takes the only logical stance: "I don't know, and neither do you, but an open mind and severe criticism may get us closer to the truth."