It's the "sticky conclusion" effect: once considered, an idea wants to be defended.
Do you generally find it useful to semi-anthropomorphize ideas/representations/drives like that?
Particularly in programming, it's very useful to think of elements of a project (of varying scale) as knowing certain things, understanding certain ideas, having certain skills or ensuring certain properties. Once you have enough skill, many subtasks can be thought of as explaining some idea to the program or teaching it to do new tricks. (I'm not talking about anything AI-related, just normal software development.)
(My statement you quoted is somewhat wrong, it could instead either act as referring to the hypothetically more common rationalization dynamic...
How do you notice when you're rationalizing? Like, what *actually* tips you off, in real life?
I've listed my cues below; please add your own (one idea per comment), and upvote the comments that you either: (a) use; or (b) will now try using.
I'll be using this list in a trial rationality seminar on Wednesday; it also sounds useful in general.