We are infected by our own misunderstanding of how our own minds work.

Kelly’s line points to a reflexive problem in self-knowledge: the mind is both the instrument and the object of inquiry, so its blind spots distort its own self-explanations. “Infected” suggests that mistaken folk-psychology—intuitions about intention, attention, memory, and rational control—spreads through our thinking like a contagion, shaping decisions and beliefs before we notice. The quote resonates with themes common in cognitive science and in Kelly’s technology writing: humans routinely overestimate conscious control, underestimate bias and automaticity, and then build personal narratives and social systems on those errors. The significance is a call for epistemic humility and for better models of cognition when designing tools, institutions, or self-improvement practices.