Experience is not much of a teacher; it is, rather, a continuous exit exam. For we are not very good at “learning” from events.
– You are told that experience is accumulated knowledge when it is largely a survival filter, a fitness test. Those we call “experienced” are simply those who had the traits that allowed them to survive in a given function in order to be able do it for a long time: what we call on this forum absence of fragility.
– This confusion is similar to mistaking the Lamarckian for the Darwinian. There is some direct learning (Lamarckian) in experience, but it has to coexist with a stiff selection test.
– The consequence is that “experienced” people should limit their teaching to avoidance of fragility.
– And our preferences show that we get the point (intuitively): we tend worship old people when they are successful, and despise (and neglect) them when they are ordinary. Yet both have, technically, the same “experience”.
[VIA NEGATIVA, LINDY EFFECT, SKIN IN THE GAME]
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