Narcissists Absorb Information Without Transformation

My impression is that they are experts at dissimulation rather than absorption.

The term “assimilation” refers to a process that involves a transformation, such as the transformation of food into energy via the process of cellular respiration or the transformation of information into knowledge through the process of applied understanding and comprehension. During the process of assimilation, a change takes place, which results in the production of a new thinking, behavior, or object form.

Personas that are pathologically narcissistic, in my opinion, are either incapable of genuine integration or at the very least hostile to it. Rather of receiving the knowledge and being altered by it, they process it without being affected by it. They calculate but do not transform, and there is no inner alchemy that takes place. New experiences are circumvented by learning and comprehension that is disallowed at any higher level.

Pretence, fabrication, posturing, dissembling, and artifice are all examples of simulation and dissimulation, which happens to be the norm. They are able to parrot, approximate, and send data across a network; but, the rules do not alter, the parameters are fixed, and the algorithmic manipulation is immutable; there is no genuine interaction, only an interface.