Learning by mistakes?

[The_Final_Stand]

Over the last few days I've been to a few university induction days, preparing to head off to one. There have, as would be expected, been some talks about what to expect and such.

One of the things that stuck out to me was stressing that making mistakes was not a bad thing, that making mistakes was how you learn. To me, this makes... some sense, but nowhere near as much as I'd like. Surely it is better to know the answer beforehand, so you don't have to learn it, since you already know?

On top of that, wouldn't knowing something and knowing it is right be better than knowing something and that it is wrong, since if you know what's right, then you also know that many contradictory things are wrong, whereas if you only know that you are wrong, you don't necessarily know what else is wrong?

Does that make sense?

[druid91]

Over the last few days I've been to a few university induction days, preparing to head off to one. There have, as would be expected, been some talks about what to expect and such.

One of the things that stuck out to me was stressing that making mistakes was not a bad thing, that making mistakes was how you learn. To me, this makes... some sense, but nowhere near as much as I'd like. Surely it is better to know the answer beforehand, so you don't have to learn it, since you already know?

On top of that, wouldn't knowing something and knowing it is right be better than knowing something and that it is wrong, since if you know what's right, then you also know that many contradictory things are wrong, whereas if you only know that you are wrong, you don't necessarily know what else is wrong?

Does that make sense?

Yes. Yes it does.

However usually when your new and you make a mistake, a helpful person will explain things to you afterwards.

And if no-one knows the right way, then the only way to learn is by mistaken trial and error.

[Comet]

They tell you that because no one is perfect and people who try to be perfect end up utterly broken before too long, according to my experiences at uni.

Don't actively try to make mistakes, of course, but don't fear them either. Just go into things with a dose of humility and do your best without constantly thinking that your best should be more than it is.

So in short: not making mistakes is cool but if, and indeed when, you make one you should see what you can learn out of it and not consider it a negative experience.

[DeadManSleeping]

They tell you this because you are a freshman in college. I would like everyone who didn't make any big mistakes their freshman year of college to raise their hand.*

Mistakes ALWAYS HAPPEN. They want you to remember to learn from them instead of hating yourself for them. It's a matter of constructive reaction versus destructive reaction.

*I will punch anyone who does so for being a filthy liar

[Shpadoinkle]

Knowing how to do a job (or whatever) properly doesn't just involve knowing what to do, in involves knowing what NOT to do.

Take lawncare for instance. Say you're out on your lawn and find out that you got slugs and snails every-damn-where. So you decide to mix some salt in with the water you use to water your grass and plants, because this will make sure it gets everywhere and salt kills snails and slugs, right? Well, salt also kills plants.

So yeah, you often learn more from doing something wrong than doing it right.

[Tirian]

I've found that learning from your mistakes is important, and if anything is more important, it's learning from other people's mistakes so you don't have to make them yourself.

[druid91]

They tell you this because you are a freshman in college. I would like everyone who didn't make any big mistakes their freshman year of college to raise their hand.*

Mistakes ALWAYS HAPPEN. They want you to remember to learn from them instead of hating yourself for them. It's a matter of constructive reaction versus destructive reaction.

*I will punch anyone who does so for being a filthy liar

*Raises hand*

I made no mistakes. I made sub-optimal choices.:smallwink:

[pendell]

From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GND10sWq0n0) .

I'm reading several books on patenting inventions, and one thing ALL the authors stress is the importance of not being afraid of mistakes.

The problem with fear of failure is that means you won't try anything unless you are absolutely, totally sure nothing will go wrong.

Which means you spend most of your time paralyzed with fear instead of innovating.

I suspect perfectionism is a very useful attitude if you're working in Explosive Ordinance Disposal or accounting -- where you're simply applying well-known procedures and the cost of deviation is expensive. But if you're in a job that requires any degree of creativity or innovation, fear of failure is a death sentence.

If you're a manager overseeing such people, I'm told the thing to do is to punish mistakes while trying very lightly but to punish refusing to try very harshly. As it should be. People who try and screw up can learn from it and do better. But people who won't do anything ... well, as I said, it's not a job they're suited for.

On a related note -- I note in passing that the greatest innovators and entrepreneurs of our generation (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and such) typically were not class valedictorians. Again, this is not surprising. The ability to listen to what professors tell you and conform to their standards is not at all the same as that for innovation, which requires you to push beyond the standards and rewrite them.

That's why the Darth Vader school of management doesn't work in the real world. If you choke everyone who produces sub-optimal results, you're essentially forcing them not to take risks, which means they will keep repeating the same procedures without deviation.

That's also why you'll notice large companies such as IBM or AT&T are being bypassed by companies like Apple, and why Linux was made by Linus Torvald. It's because the larger a company is the more risk-averse the shareholders are, the more they promote people who maintain the status quo and the less likely they are to try new things, which always involves risk.

The result is that you have old, big companies getting bypassed and overtaken by smaller companies which have nothing to lose.


So I think the OP makes a great deal of sense. While failure isn't something to seek out, it's not the end of the world either. It's the tuition you have to pay for success.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[KenderWizard]

Learning from mistakes isn't the ideal, but if you don't know, and you can't learn from a book or another person (eg, you're starving and need to learn how to make food from an egg, cheese and stale bread because that's all you have in the house and the internet's down), trial and error is the only game in town! And if you decide to cook the eggs by putting them whole into the microwave and they explode, you can either cry over spilt egg or you can say "Well, at least I've learned something here!" and make a toasted cheese sandwich with the remaining ingredients instead.

[ForzaFiori]

In my opinion, while learning an answer beforehand is usually easier, learning it by screwing up sticks with you MUCH longer. For instance, when I was told not to put off my work in college, I nodded my head, but let it go in one ear and out the other. It worked in HS, why not in college? When I nearly had a breakdown halfway through my first semester cause i wasn't sure how I was gonna pass everything, it drove home that nugget of knowledge, and I've been doing work when it's assigned (or possibly a dayish later, if it's assigned 4 or 5 days in advance) ever since.

[Kuma Da]

On top of that, wouldn't knowing something and knowing it is right be better than knowing something and that it is wrong, since if you know what's right, then you also know that many contradictory things are wrong, whereas if you only know that you are wrong, you don't necessarily know what else is wrong?

Does that make sense?

My experience has been, outside of math, that kind of exclusivity rarely exists. There can be multiple rights for a given situation, even multiple truths.

Or, to look at it another way, you're always free to criticize yourself. But, if you want to feel better, be confident, and not waste all that extra energy, forgive yourself your mistakes. The entire human learning experience is predicated on fumbling blindly around in the dark for meaning, and sometimes we come to some pretty awesome realizations because of it.

[pendell]

In my opinion, while learning an answer beforehand is usually easier, learning it by screwing up sticks with you MUCH longer.


Another issue is that if you're learning from other people, you're essentially trusting them to be both right and willingly telling you the truth.

And nothing EVER goes wrong from trusting authority figures, does it? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHiX0FZcjkA&feature=related)

Which is why it's useful to cultivate critical thinking. This means a willingness to make mistakes and even to believe things that authority figures are absolutely convinced are wrong.

Respectfully,

Brian P.