... even when told.

That's GP's point, I suppose - that people may have plenty of good moves available, but they've also built up near-instinctive defenses and repulsion fields around them - so even if they accidentally think or read about one of such options, they'll reject it as fast as it registers to them. It might be that the only way through those defenses is for someone else, or some situation, to force one to consider the option for a few more seconds or minutes.

I know I have this problem myself - some steps seem unavailable until some third party just plain tells me, "yes, you are actually allowed to do this, and you already know nothing bad will happen".

I am the GP you are referring to and - thank you for explaining my point perhaps better than I did :)