# Learning from mistakes...



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Do we really learn from mistakes - or are we doomed, being the people we are, to go on repeating them.

It would be nice to hear of your experience, though I hope you won't revisit anything too painful.

One minor example - I've always had difficulty telling East from West and got them completely mixed up in a Geography paper once. Luckily it was my mock O-level, so it helped me not to do the same in the real exam.

Once, as a student, I walked into town and it was only as I mounted the steps back to college (St Aidan's, Durham) that I realised I was wearing odd shoes, one high-heeled, one not. But twenty years later, as I was registering a tutor group at our local sixth form college, I asked if there were any questions, and a girl, laughing as she peered under my desk, said, 'Yes - why are you wearing a different shoe on each foot?'


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I've always had difficulty with right and left. This can be really awkward when dancing. When I started doing folk dancing, they were trying a sword lock which is achieved by the dancers holding swords and weaving in and out - rather like a maypole. The lock is then formed and the leader holds it aloft. However, I had my "sword" in the wrong hand - luckily they were only wooden laths or heads might have rolled!








Now that I've got a wedding ring on, it's a little easier.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Ingenue said:


> Do we really learn from mistakes - or are we doomed, being the people we are, to go on repeating them.
> 
> It would be nice to hear of your experience, though I hope you won't revisit anything too painful.
> 
> ...


Obviously a lady driver!


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Naughty naughty, moody!

Reminds me of a colleague's anecdote. A woman driver stalled her car as the lights turned green in Durham (a hilly city). Drivers in the queue behind hooted, but the car immediately behind was a police car. The police driver switched on his loud hailer, and said, 'Now now - give the lady some time - don't pile in like that, it's not nice.' Just then, the woman, as she struggled to get going, released the handbrake & through the police loud hailer came the immortal words, 'She's rolling back, the silly b*tch. Can't even do a hill start, the stupid cow!'


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## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

I employ discretion as a means of avoiding a mistake that I deemed too great to repeat, albeit, it's not absolute, it does work from time to time. I suppose one can never be too careful. 

I've always had difficult telling where West is, and the amount of times that I've gotten lost trying to pin-point which direction might possibly be West, is just ludicrous. I guess there's still time for me to learn, yet. 

I say, and without any actual accuracy, that we do learn from our mistakes, but that process alone doesn't completely eliminate them. We are bound to repeat them from time to time; they may not occur in the exact form, but perhaps in a variation of it.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Ingenue said:


> Do we really learn from mistakes - or are we doomed, being the people we are, to go on repeating them.
> 
> It would be nice to hear of your experience, though I hope you won't revisit anything too painful.
> 
> ...


I do my best to learn from my mistakes: if possible, trace the source of my difficulties; take remedial action; be mindful of it in the future.

But there are a lot of complications, it frequently happens that I don't even realize when I'm making a mistake--not much hope on that until I do realize it. Other times, I cannot seem to correct whatever is causing the mistake [I certainly felt that way on a pair of Calc 3 exams! Yikes!].

I do my best, but in the end, I'm an imperfect being. I think that doing the best one can is all that we can ask of ourselves. Or?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

There is a saying that the only person who never made a mistake was the person who did nothing. I think it was Edison who made over 1000 lightbulbs before he finally got one which worked! Practice makes perfect.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I think individuals often learn from their mistakes. But collectively, as a society, we are no smarter than a yeast culture, and simply incredibly bull-headed. We make exactly the same mistakes over and over and over again, every time hoping that this time round, the outcome will be different.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

brianvds said:


> I think individuals often learn from their mistakes. But collectively, as a society, we are no smarter than a yeast culture, and simply incredibly bull-headed. We make exactly the same mistakes over and over and over again, every time hoping that this time round, the outcome will be different.


Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can
never learn anything from history.
George Bernard Shaw


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Taggart said:


> Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can
> never learn anything from history.
> George Bernard Shaw


Leave it to Shaw to come up with biting [and frequently true, as far as I can reckon] witticisms.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

If I could learn from every one of the many, many mistakes I've ever made and will make, I would be the most brilliant human being that ever lived. As it is, I learn from maybe 10% or less of them and am unfortunately still pretty much an idiot.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

The right and left thing is no joke. I remember driving in Italy a few years back, out of Naples and heading south, and everyone in the car shouting _Right! Right!_ at me causing me to veer left. Co-ordination and perspective was lost in the shift of seats and lanes - we drive on the left over here.

I think we'd be boring if we learned from all our mistakes. I know I have weaknesses which derail me from time to time. I try avoid them knowing I can't correct them...


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Kieran said:


> The right and left thing is no joke. I remember driving in Italy a few years back, out of Naples and heading south, and everyone in the car shouting _Right! Right!_ at me causing me to veer left.


The people around Naples can of course not point fingers when it comes to not learning from history. They built their city on top of Pompeii...


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

brianvds said:


> The people around Naples can of course not point fingers when it comes to not learning from history. They built their city on top of Pompeii...


And they drive like nutjobs (though I realise that me driving down the wrong side of the road and straight at them doesn't give me a leg to stand on in this complaint)....


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Kieran said:


> And they drive like nutjobs (though I realise that me driving down the wrong side of the road and straight at them doesn't give me a leg to stand on in this complaint)....


Rather like the woman who phoned her husband to warn him that somebody was driving the wrong way down the M1. He replied, "Just one? There are thousands of them, they're all going the wrong way!"


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I don't know...I really hope that with effort and reflection, yes people do indeed learn. When things are considered important or even a matter of survival, why not?

That being said, in 6th grade I got an "award" from sarcastic camp counselors(all their awards were sarcastic because we had the "screw up" group, lol), "Most likely to lose his stuff."

This has not changed one bit. I really want it to change.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Taggart said:


> I've always had difficulty with right and left. This can be really awkward...


This is apparently fairly common and I think is incurable. I can't tell right from left without thinking about it - usually long and hard. In my case it goes with the absence of any sense of direction. I can get disoriented and lost walking around the block. Never seen any statistics on this.

When driving, my wife has learned to say "Turn left" at least half a mile ahead of time, so that I can struggle with the concept.


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## Ryan (Dec 29, 2012)

Only if we truly recognise it as a mistake. We call things mistakes while in denial that they were a mistake. You can recognise a bad decision but if you still think of it as beneficial in some way or another then you will not have learnt from it. I.e If you are on a diet because you're fat and decide to eat a slice of creamy chocolate cake, then feel bad after it and see it as a mistake. You must recognise why it's a mistake, next time in the same situation you will be tempted to relive the benefit of taste knowing full well it's a mistake. You weight up the benefit of taste over the mistake of countering your diet. The only real way to learn in this circumstance is to experience a negative consequence as a result e.g you you become diabetic or something.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

One lesson I find it very difficult to learn is when to give up on something.

But boy, the relief when you finally stop banging your head against the brick wall! :lol:


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