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jimmy comments on Teaching Introspection - Less Wrong
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I think you miss the point of the linked article, which is not that we are "not very good" at introspection, but that introspection is literally impossible. We don't have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons. We don't have little instruments hooked up to our internal mental mechanisms telling us what's going on. I fear that people who think they do are somewhat fooling themselves.
That doesn't mean we can't have models of ourselves, or think about how the brain works, or notice patterns of mental behavior and make up better explanations for them, and get better at that. But I think calling it introspection is misleading and begs the question, as it conjures up images of a magic eye that can be turned inward. We don't have those.
We can't open the box and see what is inside directly, but we do have more info than we do about other people. We have partial access to the outputs of different parts of the brain.
We can simulate how we'd respond in circumstances in addition to the circumstances we actually find ourselves in. Of course, we can think we're simulating what we'd actually do but actually simulate what we think we should do, but that's a self deception problem and not a problem fundamental to introspection.
For example, I can ask someone "Why did you buy that car?" and they can answer the first thing that comes to mind (which may be wrong, and may be selected because it makes them sound good), or they can think "hmm, would I have felt the urge to buy the car if it was not blue? No? I guess color was important"