Learning from other people's mistakes

[Tim R]

Leo talks about learning from the mistakes others have made before you and that you can learn from that, instead of having to go through all those traps yourself.

But is this really possible? I'm not quite sure how this form of learning is as "valid" let's say as learning from experiencing your own mistakes. Because then you really know, you felt what went wrong and therefore really have a deep connection to the error you made.

But when learning from other people's mistakes, this connection doesn't really exist, so how can you really learn from the mistakes of other people?

[Leo Gura]

It's possible if you're really wise. But since most people are fools, they will have to hit their own face against the brick wall to learn the lesson.

And the biggest fools don't even learn the lesson then. They might hit their face against that brick wall 20 times and still not learn. Some people would rather die than learn their lesson.

[Snader]

Embodying something deeply usually requires direct experience, but you can still choose what you want to embody, and that's where relativism comes into play.

So that advice I think assumes you have some sort of goal and end in your mind. So you can do research on what's been efficient on the way there according to history, and also what haven't been. As an example the famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is about 7 habits that have been researched to be the best habits to live by, IF accomplishing goals and being efficient in life is what you want. Those wouldn't work of course if you didn't want that life. 

And of course whatever already researched you learn from someone else, it's not 100% solid, but it's base on odds. You can achieve your goals and be efficient even without applying the 7 habits into your life, and it's even favorable, if you want to let's say come up with even better habits. Or if you wanted to create something totally new, then there wouldn't be much well maintained road for you to use, instead you would have to make your own road through the unknown and you could only learn through direct experience.

And it very well depends on the goal, that how much you really need the feeling of making a mistake.

[mmKay]

Sometimes you gotta learn from the school of hard knocks, and IMO sometimes its actually a better way of evolving rather than walking on eggshells not to make a mistake

( take this with common sense and discernment)