Comment by mistermann

How it is, is that when you query a human about themselves, you get a System 1 subconscious heuristic approximation, the accuracy of which is massively variable, but not necessarily random.

This is quite deep in the social stack, so at this point we just "pretend"[1] it's true.

[1] I use "pretend colloquially: it's actually not even on the radar most of the time, unless one works in marketing, "public relations", etc.