Well, the great truth is a lot of people don't look at their games critically in general.
Very true, and they shouldn't have to. I'm not barging into people's homes and demanding that they think about games, though. I'm talking about people that are here, discussing how game work, and that's when the bar should be minimally passed, yes?
Not so convinced. I've seen Fate fans who just take it as a given that elements of that experience are the best way to approach things without stepping back and asking themselves why. And who flat out act like you don't know what you actually like when you claim some elements of their approach is actively unappealing.
Yes, jerks exist. I've found that exactly same attitude quite often here at ENW when discussing games that aren't D&D. Sadly, there is a propensity for those that have moved away from D&D to be harsh in criticism about the game. For some, it comes from an honest place. For others, they've just swapped identity in the D&D group for identity in the anti-D&D group, and done no thinking of their own.
Now, if you want to claim you're somewhat less likely to run into those than unself-reflective players of D&D, in an absolute total numbers sense you're obviously right--but I'm not convinced you're right in regard to the percentage of players of those kinds of games. To the degree its true, its only so because relatively few people end up in Fate or PbtA games without having wandered through some other kind of game first--but those that do are perfectly capable of not thinking about why they like what they like just as much.
Nope, percentage as well. If you normalize for the number of players of D&D versus the number of players of PbtA, and took a percentage of who had played both games, the size of only PbtA players by percentage (normalized) will be staggeringly smaller than that of the same for D&D. Claiming otherwise suggests that PbtA has a strong, if small, market penetration such that it can be always available to players and that there is no significant draw to play D&D for those players. Given the market penetration of D&D, it's absolute number dominance, the number of times this could be true is much, much smaller than it is for D&D, even if your normalize for population size.
I mean, right now, if you took a representative sample of 100 people who have played D&D and asked them if they had every played (or even heard of) PbtA games, you might get 10 (recall that ENW is a very odd subset of the total market). On the other hand, if you took a sample of 100 PbtA players and asked them if they've played (let's assume heard of is guaranteed) D&D, that number is going to be nearly all. PbtA just doesn't have the market share to provide a stable and robust source for games such that you are unlikely to need to go somewhere else. Most PbtA players come from D&D to begin with -- the ones that are curious, or have groups that like to experiment, or that get tired of D&D and it's D&Disms. Both of the groups I've played non-D&D games have consisted of people that have massive experience with D&D -- all of them. Prior to introducing my home group to Blades in the Dark, none of them had played anything like it -- just D&D and games very similar to D&D.