> I imagine having premises and thinking it through has a better track record of reaching conclusions consistent with reality.

You only need to make one mistake in the entire chain of reasoning to get a wrong result.

Mathematically speaking, if your total probability of making even one mistake somewhere in the chain is 50% or greater, the result is still a coinflip.

Success is a combination of reducing your error rate, keeping your chains of reasoning short, and verifying the intermediate results empirically.