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I interact daily with people who did not have the chance to go past primary school or to go to school at all. And they did have to learn skills through alternat

I interact daily with people who did not have the chance to go past primary school or to go to school at all. And they did have to learn skills through alternate means. I myself had to learn computing and programming with little to no electricity at home, and only a few people that owned computers (which I had to borrow). I do agree that you can learn with trial and observations, but it's way faster to have someone transmit the knowledge either in person or in books. And once learned, it is learned, unless you don't use that piece of knowledge for a long time and you forget about it. And it's exponential, learning things enable you to learn more things. You don't have to restart from scratch for similar situation. Like you don't have to learn letters again to learn a new Latin languages. > Not everybody is capable of actual engineering though, as engineers follow processes and measure things They are capable of it. It's just that most people don't care about that if there is another way to get what they need (including getting other people to do it)

gopalv 2y ago
> I do agree that you can learn with trial and observations, but it's way faster to have someone transmit the knowledge either in person or in books. This entirely depends on the teacher or the book author. The "do not try anything new, but repeat after me" is a popular method of teaching things when we talk about skills, but often the next step is not just pursued but entirely discouraged. There is a particular point where a teacher says "some of you might fail, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make" & ask people to do something entirely new by themselves. That is cross-over point where being self-taught has some advantages, because you have external guidance but not instruction. If you're the kind of person who has failed a lot learning basics, then those new failures are less of a knock on your ego than if you had coasted through the early years without learning the parts which come after a failure. Maybe if we all had a clear memory of "learning to walk", it would help - six+ months of falling down and not giving up, which most of us have done once.

gopalv 2y ago

> I do agree that you can learn with trial and observations, but it's way faster to have someone transmit the knowledge either in person or in books. This entirely depends on the teacher or the book author. The "do not try anything new, but repeat after me" is a popular method of teaching things when we talk about skills, but often the next step is not just pursued but entirely discouraged. There is a particular point where a teacher says "some of you might fail, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make" & ask people to do something entirely new by themselves. That is cross-over point where being self-taught has some advantages, because you have external guidance but not instruction. If you're the kind of person who has failed a lot learning basics, then those new failures are less of a knock on your ego than if you had coasted through the early years without learning the parts which come after a failure. Maybe if we all had a clear memory of "learning to walk", it would help - six+ months of falling down and not giving up, which most of us have done once.