Some Personal Observations on How We Learn From Experience

Introduction - Why I Am Writing This

I am currently reading the “Riverworld” books by Philip José Farmer and am up to “The Dark Design” which is the third book in the series. I did a story about the overall series that you can read below.

The concept of Riverworld is that everyone who ever lived is resurrected for some reason, and it is full of historical figures like King John, Mark Twain, Cyrano De Bergerac, Alice LIddle and Sir Richard Francis Burton plus a certain Peter Jairus Frigate is heavily involved (note the initials, is this the writer’s equivalent of film cameos by Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Jackson, Stan Lee and more?)

Anyway, an incident occurs where they talk about cutting a boat in half with a laser beam, which I thought was a ridiculous idea, but then I thought about it and realised that actually, it might not be a problem.

Not A Problem?

Riverworld has a river, power sources and raw materials. The books show us how these are taken on board. The people we meet in the book range from Neanderthals to an ALien involved in accidentally killing off humanity in 2008, plus lots of people who remember their skills and knowledge from their time on Earth.

So that knowledge was in their heads, and that would mean, given the resources, they could actually construct and use a working laser. There is no detail in this but you know that if people have the knowledge, even from a previous life, they will be able to apply that know how to their current situation.

And So To Us

We all have knowledge inside us, and these days access to the biggest reference library ever, even more wide-ranging than the Library of Alexandria, but we still continually think we can’t do things.

Very often on computers, I have people tell me that they have been working on an email or document all day, then the computer has crashed or something and they completely lose all their work. My first thing, although it is absolutely no use, is to tell them they should have backed up their work. On Emails, never ever create a large document in your email client, use a document processor like Microsoft Word which has autosave (make sure it is switched on), and the same for your documents and workbooks. I am writing this using Google Docs which effectively autosaves every word that I type, and as yet I have never lost anything in over a year of using it.

But back to the lost work. Once you have worked on something you have actually mostly done it. It is there in your head. If it contained complex formulas you will probably not have to work those out again because you will know where you found them or how you worked them out.

So if you recreate your work (and keep it saved) you will do version two much faster than the original because you have given yourself the knowledge on the first run, and learned a lesson in making sure that your work is saved.

You have learned from your previous experience.

In Conclusion

We pick up things and store them so that going forward we can do things more efficiently. You do get there much more quickly if you know where you are going. If you make a mistake you put things in place to make sure that will not happen again, well I do.

Use everything you do as a lesson to make your life better as you move forward. Also, learn from others by talking with them and taking in what they have learned. Always have a Plan “B” or even a Plan “C” as well.

I think "Crash" by The Primitives (a song I used to play with Spoon - the Geordie one) is appropriate to play while reading this.