Do people who deny knowledge learned from books as "book learning" over estimate the value of knowledge gained from experience?

submitted by [deleted] from self.whatever

Like I am convinced if you do not know formal logic you will be easy prey of politicians and propagandists. Unless you're freaking Aristotle experience will never be enough to match with knowledge refined and passed down through books.

all 10 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]jet199Instigatrix 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

No, you need both.

You have to have real world experience to even pick up on some things books are telling you, let alone get a good understanding of the things you do take in.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I know you need both. But experience seems overrated and not nearly as comprehensive. If experience was so valuable why do some professions replace experienced workers with fresh graduates?

[–]jet199Instigatrix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

See you are just proving my point.

You know nothing about the war the world works.

They do it because experienced workers have built up years of party rises and benefits so cost much more. It's about cutting costs and hoping for the best. Then you have the issue that experienced workers will have the confidence to speak up when they see something wrong which bosses didn't like. There are multiple huge scandals which have happened after companies have made such a move.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If I don’t understand they way the world works, can we agree that you do not understand economics?

If the experience of the experienced person was more valuable than the low salary of a noob they would not fire the experienced person to cut costs, as his experience would justify a higher salary.

It seems you are saying confidence and supervisation of others is what make experienced people valuable to an organization, otherwise any noob with these skills could replace an experienced person.

[–]Zapped 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I work in a profession where experience trumps book learning. Of course, if one combines the two, they put themselves in the best position. There is a practical side to theory that can only be learned from experience.

[–]raven9 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think practical experience is best when combined with knowledge from books because they usually represent accumulated knowledge from multiple sources so they are often the gold standard as a reference for the best way to do things.

[–]jagworms 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Excuse me, professor, but you can't overestimate the knowledge learned from experience.

[–]IkeConn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It depends on whether they are chest feeders or normal.

[–]Masterblaster 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ideally the books help you learn from other people’s experience so you don’t make the same mistakes as them, or waste time rediscovering something already known.

But there are clueless academics who use this as a crutch, IMO

[–]Canbot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They are thinking about the books that they are fed in school, which are curated to push a political and ideological belief system.

You are thinking about the relatively few great books that you have read.

You are not talking about the same thing.

Aside from that I think you over estimating what those books have done for you. I don't think you are much less susceptible to propaganda for having read them.