Beware thought patterns that approximate to "Everything they said made sense until they reached their conclusion, which felt obviously false, so I dismissed them/the argument."

I think even smart people will often think or say this without realizing how big a sign it is that they failed a confusion check.

Maybe the speaker made a mistake! Some verbal sleight-of-hand? If so, you should be able to spot it, articulate it, argue it. Not immediately, maybe, but eventually.
Otherwise, gut feeling/vibes/intuition are hard to distinguish from pattern matching to "too weird" or "wrongthink."

The things that your gut feelings/vibes/intuitions are "expert" on are your own preferences and desires. If someone tries to use "reason" or "logic" to get you to not enjoy something you enjoy, or to enjoy something you don't enjoy, that seems like manipulation.

But for fact-claims about reality, separate your preferences? Feelings aren't robust truth detectors.

They're expectation and prediction aggregations, indicating how much weight you place on things you believe, or how "vital" those beliefs are to holding up the rest of your beliefs.

To be extra clear, this is also *not* saying that you should *accept* anything you hear just because the arguments for it are reasonable.

This isn't about the "acceptance vs rejection" mental motion. It's about the "notice confusion and investigate" one.

It's definitely true that intuitions are great at handling things you have encountered many times before, distilling experiences and knowledge into gut feelings. It makes sense to rely on intuitions to help sort through most of the bullshit you encounter day to day.

My claim specifically is that the intuitions that are built on real knowledge are not *distinguishable* from the intuitions that are built on tradition, peer pressure, and other false beliefs we take for granted.

That inner feeling of "this seems like bullshit" does not distinguish the two; it takes careful, conscious effort.