I would like to point out that "he thought like a general" makes no suggestion at all about how he thinks now. In English, most stories are told in the past tense and so the sentence is about what happened at that exact moment in time. How he thinks now is not important to the sentence. If you want to indicate that he doesn't think like a general right now but did in the past, you could say "He used to think like a general". That definitely tells you he no longer does.

Good discussion! May I add another thought...? Is it also possible that the verb "thought" is being used in this example more with an active meaning? So, at a particular time and facing a particular challenge, this "he" thought like a general. But this does not necessarily translate into a general state: there is nothing to indicate that this is habitual mode of thought for "him". From the fragment we have, we cannot know. https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/stative-verbs

All in all, the past tense only conveys that the information is true before the moment of speaking or writing. And this doesn't require any further context to confirm.

That's the most likely answer. The other (lesser used) possibility is that the person saying the sentence hasn't seen the person they're talking about in a while and so they don't know if he still thinks like a general. For example, I could say "my friend was really thin" but if I haven't seen her for 5 years I may not know whether she is still thin or not, hence using the past tense.

Hi Jennifer. From this this single sentence, one thing we can know for sure is that now he doesn't think like a general, right?