Why can’t we learn from mistakes?
Our current learning framework is based on a single premise: do – produce a mistake – fail – accumulate knowledge from that experience – re do or re try/try again .
Each iteration brings us closer to an absolute answer, may it be in the form of the conclusion of that specific problem or in a derivative path from the so-called process of learning. I would also say that usually a “discovery” is more likely to happen by bearing away from the initial question into a new proficuous field of hypothesis. Therefore derivative findings are consistently more important than absolute answers as solutions and, we can acknowledge that. This description could be perceived as paradoxical if we relate it to an infinite cycle of adding more and more questions and denying focusing on answers – but in its defense we can observe how the initial goals of the problem define the boundaries of that specific exercise and define it finite. Furthermore, our bio-intellectual limitations as a species, surely “protect” the edge of this specific reasoning.
Why should we learn from improvements?
We shouldn’t.
We take them (improvements) as the result of the framework of trial and error and forget to change the negative to a positive – error vs improvement. We choose not to use the best part of this predicament to thrive on a prosperous premise. I think that it has to do with the tyranny of merit (but I’m no specialist in the phenomenon), as people prefer to erect their character from a dramatic failure (loss?) than from thriven advancements in their actions. To achieve something from an obvious difficulty and defeat such as a negative event in a spectrum of discovery, has a universal motivational positive impact. The use of this argument is always better than the achievement itself, even from improvement and constant evolution resulting from a positive spectrum in itself. Surging knowledge from error is completely different from continuous improvement from the definition of constant realisation. I know I may seem like I am forcing semantics (and I am), but I am also applying the concept of a perspective improvement to this very text.
Based on consecutive trial and error actions, the trial and error methodology is a conservative, binary, and obsolete ideology used to produce knowledge through a sort of experience based process. It’s also anchored in an universal perspective on normals and shouldn’t be indifferent to a singular context in which both human and non-human agents play a role on the probable achievement.
Some academic fields may need these trial and error actions (and some sports can even be based on this way of producing experience), but repetition and failure shouldn’t be mistaken as the only way to observe learning. The repetition as redoing shouldn’t be endemic to the production of knowledge. Specifically in cultural based events, we don’t need to achieve results in this way. We can improve on ourselves or on the cases, examples and references without constraints. Still, we choose not to, by political conditions of production that relate to a systemic system of production. One that prefers to idle than to explode. This is a self preservation mechanism but also a tool of control and obedience from hierarchical political entities that exercise a sociopathic influence in our bodies.
We don’t we only learn through improvements?
We are taught to suffer. To endure in harsh conditions and to be recognised only if in suffering as a part of the process. Like others before us, we have to be wrong in order to be right. We must not achieve anything less than admirable and only major leaps on the fields of knowledge are important. All others are mere labourers of a system that feeds itself on the tyranny of emotional mediocrity as a framework of thought.
Yeah, you can call a mistake as learning and I accept that mindset as the prevailing one but I choose to think of it in another way. Trial and error, professes the insecurities of an abusive scientific methodology. Improving as a mechanism of the framework that facilitates care and commonality of growth.