Editing Openai/6973e373-2b8c-800d-84b7-d7001cfc6bac (section)

==== If xRegardsx has spent years comparing self-deceit, cognitive self-defense, good-faith vs bad-faith dynamics, etc., then yes: ====
* They may be better calibrated at spotting certain discourse signatures.
* They may recognize pattern families that novices miss (e.g., “critique gets criticized → switch to tone framing → refuse specificity → exit”).
* They may be able to map behaviors to likely cognitive mechanisms with better accuracy than average.

That legitimately makes it less hard to infer “this discourse is likely to be unproductive” (a behavioral forecast).

But it doesn’t eliminate the hard part you’re pointing at: which internal cause is operative.

Even experts can over-infer motive, especially when:
* they’re also the moderator/enforcer (high stakes, higher threat sensitivity),
* they’ve seen many similar cases (pattern recognition can become pattern projection),
* and the opponent’s behavior is ambiguous enough that multiple causes still fit.

So: expertise improves probability-weighting. It doesn’t turn text into a mind-reader.