Is experience a good teacher?

[Lark]

Is experience a good teacher? Why dont people learn the same lessons from the same experience? What is most important to learn lessons from first person experience or the experience of others and why?

 

[Stanton Moore]

Welcome back.

 

[anticlimatic]

If history has taught us anything it’s that it’s very difficult to learn from. Everyone seems to have to make the same mistakes themselves just be sure they weren’t being lied to. Conservatives are probably the best at learning from history.

 

[citizen cane]

History just exists. The question is really how good are people at learning from it?

 

[Madboot]

History just exists. The question is really how good are people at learning from it?

I agree with this. A good teacher needs a good student.

 

[Lark]

If history has taught us anything it’s that it’s very difficult to learn from. Everyone seems to have to make the same mistakes themselves just be sure they weren’t being lied to. Conservatives are probably the best at learning from history.

I can agree with what you've written here, apart from the last part that I highlighted, which I dont see any evidence for, anywhere.

I've read a lot of conservatives, probably as much or more conservatives and conservatism than I have socialists actually, since I think its important to explore opinions other than your own ones and my opinions remain pretty socialist but I dont find what you've written in a matter of fact way there to be true. Disraeli had a pretty clear eye to it not being true.

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History just exists. The question is really how good are people at learning from it?

Even in the sense of personal history? I was talking more in the sense of individual experience than, say, global experience or human history.

 

[Lark]

I agree with this. A good teacher needs a good student.

Well, that is true I guess.

Does a good student have to have first hand experience or do you think the experience of others can teach them anything? What do you think about the idea that some people's stories are cautionary tales to others?

 

[LucieCat]

It depends. You can have an experience and learn nothing from it. You could encounter a bad situation and then willingly enter the same situation again despite knowing it was bad the first time.

Experience can be good for learning though. A lot of people learn new skills best by some sort of physical action. And practice helps build experiences so you can do whatever the action is better.

A dancer will have to practice a coreography so mistakes can be learned from so the dancer can improve and perform at a higher level. But if the dancer just keeps dancing and not trying to pay attention and fix the mistakes, they will not improve to the fullest extent they could.

Essentially I see experience as valuable, but a person actually needs to use it and incorporate it for it to have the best impact.

 

[LucieCat]

Conservatives are probably the best at learning from history.

I am not quite sure if I understand exactly what you are going for, but I personally don't see learning from the past on a continuum of left and right ideology.

So, conservatism in theory often focuses on maintaining prior institutions and traditions whatever they may be. I'm talking more about social conservatism than the economic side of things. It could be argued that, a conservative might fight to maintain systems that have not worked (even if they may have at one point) or have had some type of negative impact (usually not on the person trying to defend the concept). I would say this is learning from history in and of itself. Unless, it comes down to "Look, out of all of these options, this one has worked far better and nothing else has accomplished anything." This is a reasonable thought process, but I don't think it means the traditional route is empiraclly the best. There could be new, unexplored options to pursue. So I don't see conservatives as fundamentally better at learning from history than another group might be.

Though I don't think there's really a right or a wrong answer to how this can be seen. It probably just depends on the individual in reality.

 

[anticlimatic]

I can agree with what you've written here, apart from the last part that I highlighted, which I dont see any evidence for, anywhere.

I've read a lot of conservatives, probably as much or more conservatives and conservatism than I have socialists actually, since I think its important to explore opinions other than your own ones and my opinions remain pretty socialist but I dont find what you've written in a matter of fact way there to be true. Disraeli had a pretty clear eye to it not being true.

That last sentence of mine there was a bit of a rushed afterthought, and I probably wouldn't say it again. Instead I would reword it to something along the lines of traditionalists being better at trusting the lessons of history that their ancestors learned, that they personally haven't in a direct empirical sense.

Socialists, for example, (and I'm assuming here, so help me out if I'm wrong) feel that they have probably learned from the historical failures of socialism in the past, but they don't trust the lesson handed down that socialism was inherently to blame for what went so wrong. And maybe they're right...but then again maybe they're not. It's a tough balance between building upwards while not falling off of the scaffold, especially since it's all just a crap shoot of throwing shit at the wall with a rough intuitive aim. I wonder how many generations of cavemen just ran from fire because someone got burned once and decided it was an evil spirit monster and could never be used for a positive purpose.

 

[Mole]

Since the invention of the printing press in 1440 our civilisation has been built on book learning rather than experience.

And since the invention of the electric telegraph in 1840 experience has become more popular.

Print has given us disinterested concern, while the electronic media has given us emotional engagement across the world.

The electric media has given us new electronic tribalism in the form of Identity Politics. And just as the antidote to traditional tribalism is literacy, so literacy is also the antidote to the new electronic tribalism and Identity Politics.

Who would have guessed?

 

[Stigmata]

On a micro level, experience can be a wonderful teacher if you allow yourself to detach enough from the event, viewing it in an objective capacity enough to acknowledge one's own wrongdoing, extrapolate the necessary data, and apply the lesson to one's own framework going forward.

On a macro level, humanity is much too arrogant and purposefully ignorant to not only acknowledge history, but modify their actions based on previously realized conclusions. We shall continue to rinse-and-repeat the same cycle of insanity we've been on for generation after generation.

 

[Madboot]

Well, that is true I guess.

Does a good student have to have first hand experience or do you think the experience of others can teach them anything? What do you think about the idea that some people's stories are cautionary tales to others?

A good student is someone who is truly ready to learn. Some people say they are, but they let their preconceived ideas and notions hold them back. An open mind is key. The experience of others can absolutely teach. As anecdotal evidence, I happen to be the youngest of my generation of cousins in the family (it is extensive). In my younger teen years, most of my cousins were in their twenties. Just observing how the males of my family managed to screw up various relationships taught me many cautionary tales about what not to do in a relationship. When I finally found a woman I was interested in the experiences of my cousins failures helped me not to make some seriously (common) block headed young man in his first relationship mistakes. That woman is now my wife of 15 years.

Experience, whether your own or others, can be a fine teacher. But first we must have the open mind of a good student to learn these lessons. Keep in mind that by "open mind" I don't mean gullibility. I suppose the better way of saying it would be an open, discerning mind.

 

[Mole]

A self made man is sui generis. He is authentic. He is the author of his own life. He is his own man. By contrast the book made man is another's creation, he is second hand, he is second rate, he is a pale and wan imitation of a man.

Real men carried the culture for 300,000 years but for the last 550 years the soft bookish man took over, but his time is coming to an end, 'father knows best' is the butt of jokes on comedy shows, real men are coming to the fore, such as Donald Trump on his own TV show.

President Trump is a real man who doesn't read books, in fact he reads almost nothing, not even briefing papers. President Trump knows in his gut how to be a real man. He knows the book is dead and the electronic image lives. And indeed the President has made himself into an electronic image. Hey, he is just like us, and we would be just like him, if we had a billion dollars.

In the Age of Electronic Media the man of experience is our Man.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Experience by definition involves retroactive learning and I prefer preventive/progressive mindset and strategies. Therefore I don't value experience too much and I think that 2 situations often aren't similar enough for people to just copy/paste the solution and get the best result possible.

 

[Lark]

A good student is someone who is truly ready to learn. Some people say they are, but they let their preconceived ideas and notions hold them back. An open mind is key. The experience of others can absolutely teach. As anecdotal evidence, I happen to be the youngest of my generation of cousins in the family (it is extensive). In my younger teen years, most of my cousins were in their twenties. Just observing how the males of my family managed to screw up various relationships taught me many cautionary tales about what not to do in a relationship. When I finally found a woman I was interested in the experiences of my cousins failures helped me not to make some seriously (common) block headed young man in his first relationship mistakes. That woman is now my wife of 15 years.

Experience, whether your own or others, can be a fine teacher. But first we must have the open mind of a good student to learn these lessons. Keep in mind that by "open mind" I don't mean gullibility. I suppose the better way of saying it would be an open, discerning mind.

Yes, that is largely what I was thinking about and that's a good example of learning from the experiences of others, cautionary tales style.

I understand too what you mean by open mind, also why you had to write a caveat about it too.

Congrats on the 15 year marriage man

 

[Lark]

On a micro level, experience can be a wonderful teacher if you allow yourself to detach enough from the event, viewing it in an objective capacity enough to acknowledge one's own wrongdoing, extrapolate the necessary data, and apply the lesson to one's own framework going forward.

On a macro level, humanity is much too arrogant and purposefully ignorant to not only acknowledge history, but modify their actions based on previously realized conclusions. We shall continue to rinse-and-repeat the same cycle of insanity we've been on for generation after generation.

I did not mean experience, exclusively, say of bad things or wrong doing or mistakes, it could as easily be learning what is the best actions to take in some situations.

Whether you have to learn it yourself directly or you can learn from the experience of others is the crux of the matter.

In terms of the final point, I am not so sure about that, I have inclined less and less towards that sort of generalisation of humanity as a whole, I think some parts of humanity have learned the lessons of history well, while others havent and it shows. On the macro level as well as the micro level. It can be seen in foreign policies, geo-politics, ideological struggles etc.

Though the same probably goes for the micro level too, there's enough crazy videos on youtube to make you think "wait, did they not hear?" or "how could anyone not know that would happen", yet, it does, some of it is funny, in the schadenfreude (spelling) kind of way but a lot of it just simply beggars belief. Which makes me think that there still is a kind of crazy "dont knock it unless you've tried it" mindset, which IS objectively really destructive, to the point where I believe that the people who keep those sorts of ideas or norms going have something to gain from the destructive aspect, or at the very least imagine they do.

 

[Maou]

Yes. Experience and pain is the best teacher. One cannot fully comprehend reality without first experiencing it. As said before, this is what actually makes it difficult to learn from history. Perspective is everything, and without it, you are lost.

 

[Coriolis]

Experience is often a great teacher, especially the experiences of others.