1. Yes, absolutely. When somebody else makes the same mistakes I do I can see exactly what's wrong. If that person were to explain the same thing I would proba

1. Yes, absolutely. When somebody else makes the same mistakes I do I can see exactly what's wrong. If that person were to explain the same thing I would probably not understand. Or I would understand, but then it wouldn't have a lasting impact. Being indirectly confronted with your own stupidity/flaws is remarkably effective. It has that "damn, I can't believe I'm such an idiot" feel to it, which overrules the normal reaction to any statement: quiet skepticism "really, hmm, you could be right, but..." and you don't really change. Even if you're convinced what you're doing is wrong, it doesn't shock you, so it doesn't stick. 2. People are horrendously bad at introspection. Every person believes he's more introspective than most other people, and less likely to adopt opinions based on feelings instead of facts. Logically impossible, as not everybody is equally introspective there must be many people who incorrectly deem themselves introspective. In essence, you are a poor judge of your own ability to introspect. Because there are so many stupid opinions on the internet it's easy to feel superior to others. Stupidity is much louder on the internet than anywhere else. Partially because any statement sounds stupid when you don't make an effort to understand which point the author is trying to make. Suddenly it's about -your- interpretation of somebody's opinion, and no longer about -understanding- the opinion and the merits thereof. So, reading stupid opinions leads to feelings of superiority, which leads to narcissism, which leads to easy dismissal of sensible opinions (less effort), which leads to more narcissism. 3. So forums like these are, I feel, part of the problem. Here I am, spending far more time writing this reply than I spent on reading your original message. In fact, I started writing this before I fully understood which point you were trying to make. I had to rewrite the beginning of this all just to make what I'm writing -remotely- relevant. My point? There isn't any. I'm just writing this to feed my narcissism.