Whenever you approach a topic of study or a field of understanding, engage with it only upon the method of reasoning by first principles.
If your resulting opinions are correct, then you have firm foundations upon which you stand.
If your resulting opinions are incorrect, then you are simply lacking some superficial information which has to justify itself to you. When you acquire this information, you merely add ornaments to robustly constructed building you have constructed in your mind.
Reasoning from first principles will never fail you.
It is only from making assumptions about that which you have not yet reasoned that you can ever be betrayed.