> There you go again, thinking about yourself. Your impulse wasn't to say, "am I doing this to my kids?" or "how will I act differently?" It was to wonder about your own nature.
Worthy of note, TLP did often harp on the fact that his view of 'narcissism' as a cultural phenomenon (I think he called it a "generational pathology") is NOT the same as the DSM definition. People are fooled into thinking every narcissist is the person with a self-inflated ego (I inferred the same from the OP, "Some of them are good enough to fool Jersey Shore candidates, while others can reach high executive positions and, in some cases, potentially win a presidential election..."). But TLP's definition was closer to someone who is completely focused on controlling others' perception of them. This could include a person who projects himself as a meek victim, but hyper-focused on relaying that image to others.
Although, this does fit quite well too: "I don't want to be with someone who doesn't care to drink tap water."
Anyway, not saying you said it was the same as the DSM definition, just adding some perspective since I read a lot of TLP and naturally compared what I read in the OP to what I remember from TLP's blog.
Something similar happened to Sega's Shining Force for iOS. I paid $1.99 for it around 2013 or 2014 and it was great. Shining Force is one of my favorite games for the Sega Genesis and it's perfect for on the go mobile since it's a turn based strategy game. I hadn't played it in a couple of years and got an itch about a month ago so I loaded it up with much anticipation. Turns out sometime last year (or late 2017?) Sega had updated it to include ads and in the process wiped all saved games for all users. Now there is a premium upgrade to remove ads which, from what I can gather from the reviews, doesn't actually remove all of the ads, just some of them. Oh and you can't play without an Internet connection now since all save games are stored off device on Sega's servers. I don't ever leave reviews for apps, but I was so angry I had to vent somewhere. This kind of shit is absolutely unacceptable garbage and everyone involved in the process that led up to it happening should be ashamed. At least I'm not out $30 though. Yikes.
> I don't remember the Buddha being big on conversation.
He did seem to nod silently a lot, but I'm not so sure if he was against conversation per se. Rather, he wasn't big on conversation that served no good purpose.
> "There are these ten topics of [proper] conversation. Which ten? Talk on modesty, on contentment, on seclusion, on non-entanglement, on arousing persistence, on virtue, on concentration, on discernment, on release, and on the knowledge & vision of release. These are the ten topics of conversation. If you were to engage repeatedly in these ten topics of conversation, you would outshine even the sun & moon, so mighty, so powerful — to say nothing of the wanderers of other sects." - AN 10.69
It makes sense to me: when measuring stuff like you would in a lab use metric, when measuring stuff like you would in a kitchen use imperial. I think it only seems weird because we rarely do both in the same sentence.
> So you are admitting you are bad about making decisions about people? Luckily you have something empirical because you are no good at judging someone.
This is almost entirely the point of take home assignments. In fact, this is almost word for word what my response would be to anyone who doesn't like take home assignments!
> Thanks for admitting that, the first step is accepting you are no good at evaluating people.
Step two is admitting that, in general, evaluating people using non-empirical means is an enterprise fraught with peril.
A bit of ambiguity about certain things is an important lubricant for almost all non-romantic relationships. My family has a good idea of my salary (as pointed out elsewhere: they can see my house and my car) but I keep the specific number to myself. They're left with just a vague notion rather than anything they could do math with. It's much the same as how they only have a vague notion about what I do in the bathroom. They can use their imagination if they'd like and infer it from various things. But I shut the door so the obvious isn't rendered so plain to see as to become a topic of awkward (and sometimes destructive) conversation.
GP gives a hint:
> You haven't changed your behaviour at all.
TLP[1] said it best:
> There you go again, thinking about yourself. Your impulse wasn't to say, "am I doing this to my kids?" or "how will I act differently?" It was to wonder about your own nature.
1: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/the_story_of_narciss...