[csallen]

Sure, the count is tracked by the company Duolingo, but that's irrelevant. The count is also tracked by the user, and that's what's important. Even more importantly, the commitment to keep to the count is made by the user. It's their commitment, not Duolingo's. Therefore, it's not relevant that Duolingo encouraged that commitment and benefits from it. The user is still going to be subject to the guilt and shame that comes when humans break our own commitments, and that's what makes quitting easier said than done.

It's kind of like telling a smoker to just quit because it's the smoking company who benefits. Yeah, sure, but the addiction is internal. They're not just selflessly smoking to help Philip Morris.

[lolive]

Reminds me of this joke: “God exists for sure, at least in the mind of believers.”

#downvoteInApproach :)

[cykros]

It never ceases to amaze me how much people discount the existence of things because they "only" exist in the minds of those who believe in them.

Nobody has yet shown me a flawless proof that they themselves exist, or anything else, and yet somehow, I manage to get through my days just fine based on the versions of things in my mind that correspond to the empirical phenomena that I experience. And occasionally those mental constructs change with new empirical data even.