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"What I'm going to lose is the benefit of learning. My experience is going to let me avoid mistakes but at the same time avoid learning from those mistakes."

"What I'm going to lose is the benefit of learning. My experience is going to let me avoid mistakes but at the same time avoid learning from those mistakes." This is one of the few points anyone's made in the whole age debate that I agree with.

create_account 19y ago
Huh? That makes little sense. If you're experienced enough to avoid a mistake, you have learned that lesson, and that's why you don't repeat it.
- abstractbill 19y ago
  The point I took away from the article is this: There are things I have enough experience of that I will never do them (installing Vista was the example from the article). But there may be things that I would learn along the way if I did install Vista that would be useful to me in some random venture.
  - gyro_robo 19y ago
    Of course you could do something else more productive with that same amount of time, which would be even more useful.
erdos2 19y ago
I agree that he will lose those things.
gyro_robo 19y ago
Something I've noticed is you get better at learning as you age. That is, learning is itself a skill, and you get more efficient with it. There is always an opportunity cost to everything you do, so you can never get all the benefits while avoiding all of the drawbacks; but having been around a while, you get a sense of what's really good and what's not. So you don't need to mess around with every new "technology" and learn from those mistakes, when you can be selective, mess around with better ones, and learn even more valuable lessons. One of the biggest barriers to learning is psychological resistance. Learning to overcome that is a skill that improves with practice as well. So even assuming our brains aren't as spongy anymore, we learn how to direct them better and can still get as good or better results than when we were less selective and soaked up information indiscriminately.

create_account 19y ago

Huh? That makes little sense. If you're experienced enough to avoid a mistake, you have learned that lesson, and that's why you don't repeat it.

abstractbill 19y ago
The point I took away from the article is this: There are things I have enough experience of that I will never do them (installing Vista was the example from the article). But there may be things that I would learn along the way if I did install Vista that would be useful to me in some random venture.
- gyro_robo 19y ago
  Of course you could do something else more productive with that same amount of time, which would be even more useful.

erdos2 19y ago

I agree that he will lose those things.

gyro_robo 19y ago

Something I've noticed is you get better at learning as you age. That is, learning is itself a skill, and you get more efficient with it. There is always an opportunity cost to everything you do, so you can never get all the benefits while avoiding all of the drawbacks; but having been around a while, you get a sense of what's really good and what's not. So you don't need to mess around with every new "technology" and learn from those mistakes, when you can be selective, mess around with better ones, and learn even more valuable lessons. One of the biggest barriers to learning is psychological resistance. Learning to overcome that is a skill that improves with practice as well. So even assuming our brains aren't as spongy anymore, we learn how to direct them better and can still get as good or better results than when we were less selective and soaked up information indiscriminately.