Oops, I did it again

One of my flaws is overgeneralizing my model of myself to to other people ("but I can read nutritional labels and put the facts in context, so clearly we don't need more intervention"). My modest assessment is that I've made tons of progress on this, but clearly not an infinite about. Take How to Win Friends and Influence People. I dismissed this book because it didn't solve any problems I had, and because I couldn't see a time in my life when it would ever have solved any problem I had. I conceded that it may solve some problems, but just like I did with the doctor-based abuse screening, I dismissed it as having a small gap between "not in a place where they can process this, rendering the book useless" and "at a place where they have already learned this, rendering the book useless". Implied in "small" is the idea that no one ever gets stuck in between those two spots: the book may speed up their traversal, but it doesn't get them anywhere they wouldn't have already gotten. As far as I can tell, this is true for me about most things. Depending on your point of view, that's because once I become capable of fixing a problem I quickly do so, or because I stubbornly refuse to listen to useful advice until I'm ready to hear it.

The fact that HtWFaIP is still in print 70 years later indicates that it's solving some problem for some people. This is true no matter how witty I find the phrase "incompetent extroverts" (and believe me, I find it incredibly witty). I shouldn't have needed squid_314 to point this out to me because my dad said he found it useful in high school, and my dad is Not an extrovert. So this is a fail on my part, and I can only hope that next time I'll remember to focus on defining "who this book would be useful to" in a genuine way rather than in a smugly superior way.